The Rise and Fall of Trump and What It Means

(PHOTO CREDIT: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

By Youssef Shawky Magdy

After Donald Trump won 2016 elections, many theorizations emerged about the rise of the right in the capitalist West. This was exacerbated by Boris Johnson's victory in Britain, and the vision became clear that there would be a tug of war between a US-British economic and political alliance against Europe under the leadership of Germany.  In addition to the rise of the right-wing movements in many European countries as Germany itself and France (some expected Marie Le Pen would win or that Le Pen will succeed Macron).  But what does the rise of the right mean basically?

Since the end of the nineteenth century, the period of competitive capitalism ended and capitalism has been entering the framework of monopoly capitalism, which was characterized by the close union of financial and industrial capital.  Lenin wrote about that stage, stressing its close connection with imperialism, and we still live in the highest stage of capitalism with the change of imperialism from a national situation to a globalized one.  The question here is when does "fascism" — or what can be called more broadly the "savior right" — rise?

The savior far right rises as a response to a comprehensive social crisis represented by an economic decline in the rate of capitalist profit that cannot be compensated for by "more foreign imperialism"(imperialism against others),  in addition to a political crisis represented by the dissolution of the ruling-class coalition and the collapse of its hegemony.  Besides the ideological crisis represented in the collapse of the principles and myths supporting the status quo. 

This is accompanied by an increase in the pace of progressive movements of a left-wing nature that offer popular and progressive solutions to the crisis, such as fair wages, a fair distribution of the surplus, and an increase in workers' power and authority within productive enterprises. Perhaps the solutions become more revolutionary that try to change the entire social system.

And when those progressive movements fail for subjective (strategic and tactical) and objective reasons, the fascist right rises up as the representative of the bourgeois class, which is in crisis.  So the right tries to fix the situation in favor of monopoly capitalism, but in a populist fashion.  So, the crisis is emptied of its content and the process of displacement is installed, which projects the problem to any demographic or cultural phenomenon, such as projecting the crisis on immigrants, for example.  The right represents the middle class but in a deceitful manner.

And now, after we knew the conditions and aspects of the savior right, are these conditions and appearances fulfilled in the current capitalist West?

Of course, the capitalist West has been going through an economic crisis since the 1990s, and the Iraq war was a temporary attempt to alleviate the crisis, but the opposite happened.  The goal of securing the oil wells was achieved, but the return was serious economic and political losses.  The crisis reached a dangerous stage in 2008, and with Covid-19 crisis, the severity of the crisis increased in several situations. The profit rate reached very low rates.

Regarding the political crisis, the United States has been suffering since the Iraq war from a decline in its hegemony over the world and the consumption of exorbitant resources in its wars, which has led to Trump's tendency to reduce those interventions and limit the intervention only to very necessary situations such as threatening to intervene in Venezuela or Iran.  In Western countries themselves, liberal democratic governmentality suffers from a deep problem represented in the vulgarization of the meaning of democracy and its focus on the representative type only.  The public’s distrust of that governmentality has been increasing.

Regarding the ideological crisis, liberal democratic values ​​are proving their failure day after day, from their forced application on the third world countries within the framework of pushing them towards economic openness (which is failing for various reasons, the most important of which is that these projects are completely unpopular) to the failure of that values in the West to achieve the desired happiness.

In addition to the neoliberal ideology that fuels religious and ethnic conflicts.

As for the signs that indicate the rise of the right, we find that they are available to a large extent; for example, Trump tells us that he is “the president of the peasants and workers!” Right-wing nationalism is spreading again, in addition to anti-immigrantism.  Racist crimes are increasing day by day.

The question here is whom the rising right represents now?

In the pre-globalization era, the right "truly" represented big monopoly capitalism that was still associated with "nation-state". That link was largely structural. So we find that the laws and rules regulating the economy were related to the framework of the nation.  The economic production cycles were deeply related to the state’s economic cycles, such as the payment of salaries, allowances, official holidays..etc. In addition, industrial capitalism prevailed, not financial capitalism.  The first, of course, needs an organization and a specific context in which to work.  In one word, capitalism was capitalist "statism". Consequently, when fascism escalated, it rose in a context that made it easier for it to perform its rescue tasks, and the statism turned into hyper-statism. The bailout has come in a national context to represent monopoly capital of a national character.

But in our time, the era of globalization, capital divorced from the national context; the globalized economic cycle, in all its complexities, has separated from the national context and Financial capital prevailed.  In fact, the crisis of global monopoly capitalism needs a solution of the same size and level of complexity, that is, it needs a global solution.

The savior right cannot provide solutions but national solutions, and thus its representation in that era is limited to capital, which is not so large as to leave the context of the nation-state.  In general, there is a conflict with those small capitalist strata, and the globalization project led by big capitalism, which seizes and controls the market and has relatively little production costs.  The protectionist measures (of all kinds) promoted by the right contradict the globalization project.

Even if an extremist right-wing project succeeds in a western country, it will be overthrown by the global system, as happened in the Second World War as When the right fails to manage the crisis, it turns to violence that is forcefully defeated.

This is how we should understand Trump's rise and fall.  The rise was a response to the crisis but an inadequate response. The new US administration is more homogenous with the world order.  Therefore, it will participate in the global solution to the crisis.

Biden's victory and the defeat of Trump have not signified the success of any progressive coalition, as some liberals think.

Some believed that Trump's rise would result in a counter-left movement, and that did happen with the rise of Bernie Sanders, but that movement was defeated. Ultimately Biden does the same job as Trump, but in a more understanding and rational way.

Disturbing The Peace: UN Peacekeepers and Sexual Abuse (Part 2: Unabated Horrors)

By Devon Bowers

Author’s Note: This article and series focuses on sexual abuse and assault, with some graphic descriptions of such acts. Reader discretion is advised.

Nearing the end of the 20th century, there was an increase in United Nations peacekeeping missions around the world. While there were positive efforts to maintain and/or create peaceful environments where non-violent solutions could be pursued in war-torn nations, there was also a dark underbelly to these operations. Most prominently that peacekeepers would regularly abuse primarily women and girls, many of them having already fallen victim to government and rebel forces, they were to be victimized yet again but by the very people who should have provided security and stability.

Still worse, the United Nations itself would engage in cover ups of the abuse, hanging victims out to dry and suffer in silence. With the turn of the century, one would hope that there would new efforts would be put forth and sought after to hold abusers accountable, yet the horrors would continue unabated.

Ethiopia and Eritrea

In 1998, violence broke out between the neighboring African nations of Ethiopia and Eritrea regarding a border dispute, with the Organization of African Unity mediating a sort of peace between them, yet clashes occurred again in May 2000, ending with the OAU working out a cessation of hostilities and the UN sending in a peacekeeping mission to monitor the ceasefire and the border dispute in July 2000.[1]

The very next year it was reported that a former member of the Italian contingency had been involved in abuse, specifically the Italian military justice system was investigating them “for allegedly having sex with underage girls while serving in the Mission area.”[2] That same year, three Danish soldiers were sent home and charged with having sex with a thirteen year old Eritrean girl. This, coupled with the Italian story, enraged the local populace, with “diaspora Eritreans [accusing] UNMEE of trying to destroy their country by ‘bringing their sick nature with them.’”[3]

Though there were few reported incidents of abuse throughout the entire mission, it reveals that the cancer that is sexual abuse was still strong in peacekeeping operations.

Liberia

In September 2003, then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan requested that a peacekeeping force be deployed to Liberia to support the transitional government in their attempt to establish order and legitimacy, primarily stemming from the second Liberian civil war, with forces being deployed that month.[4]

The chief of the UN mission, Jacques Paul Klein, a French UN diplomat, emphasized that the zero-tolerance rule for sexual misconduct would be enforced and that anyone caught having sex with minors would be summarily repatriated.[5] Despite these reassurances and even the enforcement of a midnight curfew, abuse still occurred.

An internal UN letter from 2004, written by a UN Children’s Fund representative to the mission’s second-highest ranking official, stated that “girls as young as 12 years of age are engaged in prostitution, forced into sex acts and sometimes photographed by UN peacekeepers in exchange for $10 or food or other commodities,”[6] noted the failure to address several misconduct reports, and that the U.N. Deputy Secretary General, Louise Frechette, was pressuring leadership to crack down on sexual abuse.[7]

This information of the abuse of young girls was made all the worse when the UK branch of the children-oriented humanitarian organization Save The Children published a 2005 report which found that “girls as young as eight were selling sex for items such as food, beer, clothing, perfume or mobile phones [while others] were reported as having sex with adults in return for good school grades, video screenings or rides in cars”[8] and those bribing and raping these girls were primarily UN peacekeepers and agency staff. There was a stark hypocrisy as these same individuals would promote anti-sexual exploitation and abuse narratives, but would partake in that very exploitation on their off hours.

The girls would actively sell themselves to peacekeepers and aid workers as a way to make money, but there was still risk. Beyond getting sexually transmitted infections, if a girl were to become pregnant, they would quickly be disowned and blamed for their situation, despite her parents enjoying the extra funds that were being produced.[9]

The situation was extremely predatory, with “children [being] viewed as potential sexual conquests.” One example is Oretha, 15, and her 16 year old sister Sarah, who “go to the town's [Foya’s] main highway and beg from foreign aid workers in NGO-branded 4x4s who give them the equivalent of 40 pence [$0.54 USD] in exchange for sex.” If the highways were bare, “they go to the base where the UN peacekeepers are stationed and ask for food, but they say the peacekeepers, too, expect sex in return.”[10] The allegations of purchasing sex came up again in 2015 when a report from the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services noted that peacekeepers in Liberia were purchasing sex by offering money, jewelry, and cell phones, among a variety of items used to bribe and lure victims.[11] This effectively created a free-for-all of sorts where peacekeepers can abuse women and girls, with little to no concern in being held responsible for their actions.

While testimonies and reports are useful in examining the level of abuse that occurs, statistics help to create an even fuller picture, however even if one looks at the numbers, it is impossible to get an encompassing analysis.

The Numbers Game

In March 2007, the UN reported some positive changes regarding sexual abuse allegations, namely that the number of assaults in Liberia decreased from 45 to 30, with programs such as “a compulsory induction course for all military and civilian staff members to raise awareness about the effects and consequences of sexual exploitation and abuse”[12] and training local NGOs to spread the message about the UN’s program on preventing such abuse being credited for the decline. However, we have to question the numbers as there are serious problems with how they are calculated. There are two main problems: 1) the sole reliance of reporting of cases as a way of gathering data and the larger issues that stem from that and 2) the actual statistical data being so muddled that it is, at the very least, extremely difficult to get any hard numbers on the matter.

Though the UN touts its zero-tolerance policy, it is extremely important to note that the entire policy depends on people reporting abuse. While there may be actions that are an attempt to mitigate the chances of sexual abuse happening, overall, the ability of the UN to enforce its zero-tolerance policy is extremely difficult[13], as can be seen in the form of patrols. Patrols looking to curb and enforce sexual abuse laws still have difficulties as

situations that may be seen as suspicious with regards to SEA [sexual exploitation and abuse] often end up going unreported and unpunished or, if reported, garnering only a minor punishment. A typical example – and one we witnessed personally – is when a mission staffer is caught with a local person in the car. Because the couple (in this case a male UN employee and female local, in a UN vehicle parked by the side of the road at ten o’clock on a Friday night) was not caught en flagrante and neither admitted any wrongdoing (indeed, the woman slipped out of the car and quickly vanished), the end result was that the employee would only be reported as having an unauthorized personnel in his vehicle. [14]

Rather than deal similar problems through the proper channels, it was dealt with internally, generally resulting only in a peacekeeper losing their driver’s license. Not only does this deprive the victims of justice, but it also helps to skew reported numbers of sexual abuse, making the problem seem less prevalent than it actually is. Just as bad, however, is that even if there are reports from third parties, it’s almost impossible to substantiate the accusations due to the lack of physical evidence or eyewitnesses. Many times, when a victim comes forward, it devolves into a ‘he said, she said’ situation, again making enforcement near impossible.

A secondary problem with relying on reporting as the primary means of enforcing sexual abuse rules is that it assumes that sending up such incidents is a unit priority, that “reporting cases of SEA will trump other priorities – such as loyalty to colleagues or a desire not to get involved in someone else’s private life.”[15] To those ends, it has been found that many peacekeepers have an idea of what is and isn’t ‘legitimate’ sexual abuse and will act on those ideas when deciding whether or not to report.

The situation was looked at in-depth in 2013 when an independent report was conducted which evaluated the sexual abuse prevention efforts in UN missions in Haiti, Liberia, the Congo, and South Sudan, respectively. The team of was composed of General Paban J. Thapa, a retired Force Commander of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, Dr. Thelma Awori, a retired Assistant Secretary General of UNDP Africa, and Dr. Catherine Lutz, a professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

It was brought to light that there were a number of bureaucratic issues that resulted in a decrease in reports being sent up, such as:

 1) That there were multiple routes for reporting which created problems when attempting to track cases.

2) The lack of information sharing between the Office of Internal Oversight Services, the Conduct and Discipline team, and the military/police.

3) The military police weren’t out in the field, which denied “the Force Commander information about conduct and discipline that could be used to enforce the SEA policy and regulations.”[16]

4) There were poor investigation methods, which creates problems when trying to prosecute a case due to lack of evidence or evidence not meeting a high standard.

5) There was generally “a culture of enforcement avoidance, with managers feeling powerless to enforce anti-SEA rules, a culture of silence around reporting and discussing cases, and a culture of extreme caution with respect to the rights of the accused, and little accorded to the rights of the victim.”[17]

All of the problems reinforce one another, resulting in the victims being thrown away and ignored, while priority is given to abusers whose protection is multi-layered.

The conspiracy of silence even extended to victims, as many peacekeepers would simply pay them off and go about their way while the peacekeepers who would stand up for the protections and rights of victims would be stigmatized by their peers.[18]

Academic Kate Grady conducted a study on UN abuse statistics, which found in part that “the manner in which this data has been collated, presented and explained raises a number of questions as to the reliability of these statistics.”[19] For example, in 2004, statistics were provided on ‘cases,’ however the term itself was never defined and in subsequent UN reports, there was the use of phrases such as ‘allegations’ and ‘cases,’ which still lacked any definition.[20]

In 2007, a sliver of insight was provided regarding these terms, with a footnote explaining that “it should be noted that these numbers do not reflect the number of alleged perpetrators nor victims, as multiple allegations could correspond to one alleged perpetrator” and “conversely, a single allegation may be made in respect of more than one individual.” However, in later years, “the reports explain that ‘each allegation may involve more than one possible victim,’ but do not say whether any allegations cover more than one perpetrator.”[21] The lack of definitive definitions and explanations as to the details of each case or allegation and if they involve one peacekeeper and one victim or multiple peacekeepers with a single or multiple victims results in not only a dearth of understanding regarding sexual abuse, but also an inability to get a full view of the amount of abuse that is occurring.

The situation seems to be that the UN isn’t even attempting to measure the amount of abuse, but is rather “measuring the number of communications it receives about incidents of sexual exploitation and abuse.” Yet that leads to a different problem altogether, as it could mean that the measuring methods of these communications could result in having “incidents involving multiple victims or multiple perpetrators are masked since they are treated as only one allegation.”[22] This situation is made all the worse as the UN doesn’t say if it is able to account for cases that have been doubly reported and adjust accordingly.

On some level, there was an attempt to remedy this as UN Secretary General, António Guterres, stated that he would seek support in establishing a centralized repository of cases, which would be under the Special Coordinator on Improving the United Nations Response to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, with the goals of “[accelerating] the provision of appropriate aid to victims, [helping] to regularize the initiation of appropriate administrative and criminal investigations, and [providing] system-wide empirical data for more in-depth analysis of events to aid in understanding patterns of misconduct, in order to devise more effective preventive measures.”[23] However, the overall bureaucratic and linguistic problems still majorly contribute to the underreporting of abuse cases.

Burundi

In 2004, UN peacekeepers were sent to Burundi to aid in a national reconciliation attempt to end the civil war between Hutus and Tutsis.[24]

From the outset, the UN was adamant about preventing sexual abuse, with head of the mission and Canadian diplomat, Carolyn McAskie stating in an interview that the UN was enacting plans to curb the chances of abuse happening, such as having certain areas of a town be considered off limits and the threat of dismissal being used for troops who attempt to solicit prostitutes.[25]

This was followed up by discussions with battalion commanders on the issue and creating some level of accountability by having commanders face increased scrutiny as greater training and accountability was implemented. There was also a policy change which required that members report abuse, even if it was only suspect.[26]

Unfortunately, abuse still took place, with two peacekeepers being found guilty of having sex with prostitutes, one of whom was a minor.[27] Thankfully, that was the only reported case and the UN departed in 2007.

Ivory Coast

UN peacekeepers deployed to the Ivory Coast in 2004 to aid in ending the nation’s civil war and guiding it to have free and fair presidential elections.[28]

In 2007, the UN began to investigate serious accusations of abuse involving Moroccan soldiers having sex with “a large number of underage girls,”[29] which resulted in an entire battalion being confined to their barracks.

More information on the amount of abuse that was going on was brought to light via Save The Children with their 2008 report entitled No One To Turn To: The Under-reporting of Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Aid Workers and Peacekeepers.

Based on field work done in Southern Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire and Haiti, it was found that “children as young as six [were] trading sex with aid workers and peacekeepers in exchange for food, money, soap and, in a very few cases, luxury items such as mobile phones.”[30] There was even testimony from Ivory Coast children who discussed what went on in their respective towns. One boy stated that the peacekeepers “[asked] them for various types of favors,” while others went into more detail:

Sometimes they ask us to find them girls. They especially ask us for girls of our age. Often it will be between eight and ten men who will share two or three girls. When I suggest an older girl, they say that they want a young girl, the same age as us.

[…]

For us, we said to ourselves that even if it is bad, we are gaining something from it too. So we continue because we then get the benefits, such as money, new t-shirts, souvenirs, watches and tennis shoes. They also used their mobile phones to film the girls.[31]

The utter lack of morality in these peacekeepers is truly revealed here in that they are literally using children as middle men in order to abuse and denigrate other children, going about and bribing people who are in desperate need of bare necessities and preying upon them. The worst aspect is that local authorities weren’t able to unable to prosecute the perpetrators, in spite of knowing their identities, due to insufficient evidence and lack of cooperation.[32]

The use of bribing underage girls for sex was further confirmed in 2011 when a U.S. Embassy cable was released by Wikileaks. The cable focused on peacekeepers from Benin that were in the town of Toulepleu, where it was found that “parents were encouraging their daughters to sleep with the peacekeepers so they would provide for them.”[33] This only reveals the extent to which the abuse had been normalized, to the point that parents would encourage their children to sleep with UN troops. A total of 16 Beninese peacekeepers were subsequently barred.[34]

Still, some were never punished, such as in 2008, when it was reported that that ten UN peacekeepers gang-raped a 13 year old girl, with her saying that they grabbed her, threw her on the ground, and raped her. ‘Elizabeth’ stated “I was terrified. Then they just left me there bleeding.”[35] Yet no action was taken against the soldiers and worse, it was found that aid workers had been sexually abusing children, both boys and girls. There was also the case of fourteen Moroccan soldiers, where information “including DNA evidence showing that some had fathered children” [36] was considered inconclusive and so the Moroccan government dropped all charges against the soldiers.

The mission came to a close in 2017.

Haiti

During February 2004, among the US-motivated and deeply controversial[37] departure of Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the UN moved in to clamp down on the fighting that sparked up in multiple cities around the country.[38]

At the start of the operation, it seemed that the zero-tolerance policy was taken seriously, with one high level military commander saying that he was “very concerned about sexual exploitation” with a senior police official adding that its wrongness “[needed] be drummed into people. It has to be reinforced all the time.”[39] Despite these strong assertions of zero tolerance, many Haitians were not convinced that the UN took the issue seriously.

In February 2005, two UN soldiers were suspended after having sex with a prostitute[40], however, this was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the interactions between prostitutes and UN forces. The humanitarian organization Refugees International issued a report where it was stated that “prostitutes haunt the streets every evening and hang out in many of the bars frequented by UN staff,”[41] with one Haitian man saying that such establishments actively fed into the increase in prostitution and that the police were even involved.

Bolstering the argument that the UN presence aided in the proliferation of prostitution, a Haitian women’s group stated: “We’ve seen an increase in prostitution since MINUSTAH came. In 1994, we had a lot of problems with the Multinational Forces. The [peacekeepers] bring their bad habits with them to Haiti, but they do not bring change.”[42]

Interestingly enough, the ‘zero contact’ policy that was enacted in Haiti led to “increased complaints of sexual harassment by UN female personnel, both local and international,”[43] which when added onto the reluctance of victims to come forward, created a de facto wall of silence which restricted the UN’s ability to investigate allegations and get a full understanding of the problem.

The peacekeepers often contributed to larger, ongoing problems in Haiti. Violence, both physical and sexual, already came from criminals and the Haitian National Police. So the UN peacekeepers, primarily the ones from Brazil and Jordan[44], simply added on yet another layer of destruction, pain, and misery for a populace that was already bearing massive political and economic burden. This was made all the worse when those peacekeepers were the ones who would supposedly bring protection and stability but delivered the opposite.

In late 2006, the BBC revealed the amount of sexual abuse that was ongoing in Haiti, with one 11 year old girl reporting sexual abuse by peacekeepers. Another 14 year old girl described her personal horror of having been abducted and raped inside a UN naval base two years prior, where “despite detailed medical and circumstantial evidence, the allegation was dismissed by the UN for lack of evidence”[45] and the attacker was repatriated to their nation of origin.

There were peacekeepers who would regularly take advantage of the cash-strapped and desperate population for their own depraved ends, with one incident occurring of a “14-year-old girl who told of the peacekeeper who offered her jelly, sweets and a few dollars for sex with her and her friend - a child of just 11 years.”[46] BBC reporter Mike Williams told of one especially horrific story.

Sarah (not her real name) is a fragile looking girl of 16. She says that two years ago, she was raped by a Brazilian soldier serving with the UN mission there.

She stared at the ground while we talked and, almost in a whisper, she explained what happened: "He held me down by the arms and held both my wrists, twisting them back and we struggled together. And then he raped me."

Her mother cried while she recalled that day: "When I found her I didn't recognize my own child," she says. "She had the face of a dead person - I started to cry out, she couldn't tell me what had happened."[47]

Once again, there was insufficient evidence to find the perpetrator guilty of any crimes. This was a regular occurrence unfortunately.

In some cases, there would be problems due to relatives, such as with ‘Natasha,’ who was raped by a Sri Lankan peacekeeper in 2004, but whose mother forbade her from making a complaint for two years due to the stigma attached to rape.[48] Such actions only helped to muddy the waters with regards to testimony and evidence, effectively aiding the offending party in avoiding justice. Though one of the UN’s biggest miscarriages of justice would happen in 2011.

In September 2011, a video began circulating on the internet which showed a Haitian man being sexually assaulted by a group of Uruguayan peacekeepers. Eventually it was found that the assault had occurred in July, but the video, which showed four UN troops attacking Johnny Jean, only surfaced in the following months.

Two young Haitian men had come across the video while looking at a peacekeeper’s cell phone when they were exchanging music and one of the men recognized Jean and transferred the video to his own personal device, turning the video over to a local journalist soon after. The two men later met with a UN official who immediately denied any allegations, but was then shown the video.[49]

A preliminary investigation done by the UN “found that the men did not sexually abuse the Haitian teen but that they committed misconduct by allowing a civilian into their barrack and could face severe penalties,”[50] however, this is in direct conflict with information provided by medical professionals which proved that Jean “had sustained injuries consistent with having been sexually assaulted,”[51] as well as the video itself being sexual in nature. It should be emphasized, though, that there was evidence of sexual assault not just in the immediate aftermath, but could still be found five weeks after the incident.[52] From the beginning of the situation, not only do we see the immediate denial by UN officials, but then further rejection of something that is crystal clear.

Eventually, the accused soldiers were freed due to the case having stalled,[53] the details of which are rather intriguing. Jean was scheduled to testify against his attackers, with a UN spokesperson stating that the soldiers would be free until Jean could be located to provide his testimony, however he had to actually be in Uruguay to testify. [54] Actions such as these simply reinforce an observation made by the US Institute of Peace, which noted that there was a need to create effective programs to assist victims, especially when they themselves nor the UN were unable to hold abusers accountable. [55]

Another travesty of justice would take place in 2012 when Pakistani peacekeepers were accused of sexually assaulting a 14 year old boy. UN spokesperson Martin Nesirky stated that Pakistani authorities had said that the guilty individuals would be punished, “including through dishonorable discharge from service with loss of benefits and imprisonment, the latter sentence to be served immediately on return to Pakistan.”[56] Unfortunately, the punishment was laughable, as the perpetrators only served a single year in prison.[57] Even worse, was how the UN dealt with it. They agreed to have the soldiers tried in a closed trial at a Pakistani military court and took at face value assurances that there would be financial compensation for the victims. Unsurprisingly, no compensation occurred, the troops were essentially given a slap on the wrist, and Pakistani soldiers still continued going over to Haiti, unabated.

UN Assistant Secretary for Field Support, Anthony Banbury, gave some major insight when he spoke to the New York Times about the case: “People can always say punishment was too light or whatever, but the system worked as it should.”[58] (emphasis added) In doing so, he reveals that the manner in which the system works is that the UN plays dumb and pretends that national militaries will try their soldiers fairly, while making no effort to hold them accountable, and willingly leaves victims out to dry.

Similarly to Liberia and the Ivory Coast, peacekeepers in Haiti were found to have transactional sex with women in exchange for basic needs like cash, food, medication, and more. The UN’s Office of Internal Oversight stated in the aforementioned draft report that there was “significant underreporting” of abuse and noted further problems, most prominently how “a third of alleged sexual abuse involves people younger than 18, [assistance] to victims is ‘severely deficient,”[59] and that investigations regularly took over a year to complete.

The year 2015 actually saw an increase in sexual abuse cases, with a total of 99 compared to 80 in 2014.[60] A UN report stated that the Secretary General would work within his authority to ensure that abusers would be held responsible “through disciplinary actions or criminal accountability measures when so warranted” and that the Secretary General “was determined to take measures to prevent misconduct.”[61] To those ends, a number of new initiatives were to be launched, including a mandatory e-learning program on sexual abuse, asking that troop contributing nations’ pre-deployment training be up to UN standards, and the development of a complaint reception mechanism to encourage people to come forward.[62]

In the following years, there was also a change to policy as António Guterres, a Portuguese politician and diplomat, took over from Ban Ki-Moon in 2017. The new Secretary General wanted all personnel to have written statements saying that they understood and would abide by the UN’s policy against sexual exploitation and abuse.[63]

New ideas were being put into place, senior leaders were to issue management letters to “their governing bodies certifying that all allegations have been reported and appropriate action is taken on them,” screening mechanisms would work to ensure that abusers weren’t able to leave one element of the UN only to be hired in another, and anyone involved in field activities would “be required to carry the ‘no excuses’ pocket card that restates our rules and spell out how to report allegations,”[64] among other reforms.

On the topic of aiding victims, little was done. The UN Field Support Chief, Atul Khare, an Indian diplomat, spoke of the creation of a trust fund to get victims the psychological, medical, and legal help they needed, though he did note “It would be funded voluntarily, but also from the salaries withheld from those who face significant allegations which have been substantiated.”[65] This simply hearkens back to the problem that victims are not prioritized in the process of seeking justice. Unfortunately, these changes would not be enough to prevent some of the most egregious abuse that was to occur during the mission.

In 2007, it was uncovered that over 100 Sri Lankan peacekeepers were alleged to have engaged in sexual abuse and were sent packing. More specifically they were accused of transactional sex, with UN spokeswoman Michele Montas adding that “there is the question of some underage girls.”[66] More horrors were to come though, as these allegations didn’t stop other Sri Lankans from coming over to aid in operations. The Associated Press broke the story in 2017, in which they found a child sex ring was ongoing, where young girls were regularly abused.

The Sri Lankan peacekeepers wanted sex from girls and boys as young as 12. “I did not even have breasts,” said a girl, known as V01 — Victim No. 1. She told U.N. investigators that over the next three years, from ages 12 to 15, she had sex with nearly 50 peacekeepers, including a “Commandant” who gave her 75 cents.[67]

It was found that between 2004 and 2007, 134 Sri Lankan peacekeepers, at minimum, exploited nine children. Not a single person was imprisoned.

Interestingly enough, the UN data, which draws information focused on sexual abuse over a 12 year period, was found to be incomplete, varying in the amount of details especially for cases before 2010, and that “hundreds of cases were closed with little or no explanation.”[68] (emphasis added) While the soldiers involved in the sex ring were sent home, they were” still in the Sri Lankan military as of [2016]”[69] and the UN still took soldiers from Sri Lanka and sent them to Haiti in spite of the child sex ring.

A Sri Lankan general, Major General Jagath Dias, was sent in 2013 to investigate the matter, though he may not have been the best person for the job due to the fact that he was most likely a war criminal, who stood “accused of attacking civilians and bombing a church, a hospital and other humanitarian outposts in 2009, during the fierce last months of Sri Lanka’s civil war.”[70] The AP found that “Sri Lanka has never prosecuted a single soldier for sexual assault or sexual misconduct while serving in a peacekeeping mission abroad.” (emphasis added) Undeterred by the accusations against the general and the lack of discipline in the Sri Lankan army, the U.N. still accepted Dias as the investigator and said they were “working with the Sri Lankan government on enhanced screening for prospective peacekeepers,”[71] such as providing a backlog for all soldiers they send over so they could be screened by the UN.

While the mission ended in 2017[72], there were still lingering effects, especially for the children who had been fathered by peacekeepers. Haitians created new terms to describe them, “bébés casques bleus (blue helmet babies) or ‘les enfants abandonnés par la MINUSTAH’ (the children who are abandoned by the MINUSTAH),”[73] something that denotes how they were ‘othered’ in a way and a group distinct from average Haitians.

The peacekeepers created major rifts in Haiti, as they would make lavish promises to girls, “they would say that they are going to pay for their school, allow them to go to the university”[74] but nothing would materialize.

These false promises would lead to frustration later on for women who wound up birthing these peacekeeper’s children, where the mother would be the sole provider. Many of these girls were under the age of 18 at the time of their relationships with UN troops and when they had children with them, which caused a rift in not only their familial relations, as was expounded upon by one woman:

Now, the child is 4 years old and I haven’t ever received support from an NGO, from the Brazilians, from the Haitian state. It’s only me that’s giving to the child to eat because I can’t pay for school for the child… When I was with the Brazilian, I was 14 years old. I went to school at a Christian school. When I became pregnant, my father kicked me out of the house. And now I do work for someone who gives me 25 gourdes [about $0.35 USD] so that me and my child can eat.[75]

While the soldiers left, the scars of abuse echoed and lingered, casting a dark, haunting shadow over the island nation.

Sudan

In 2005, following the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which formally ended Sudan’s 21 year civil war, the UN dispatched soldiers in order to aid in its implementation, demine areas, and help repatriate refugees.[76]

Within two years, the UN was already sending soldiers back home. January 2007 saw four Bangladeshi soldiers being sent home for alleged sexual abuse.[77] That same month, it was reported that “peacekeeping and civilian staff based in Juba are accused of picking up young children and forcing them to have sex,”[78] with peacekeepers raping and abusing children as young as 12, with it having begun in 2005 and indications emerging within months of international troops initially arriving. Due to the economic disparities, some people who were abused want to continue the situation in order to have at least some money, such as was with one 14 year old boy by the name of Jonas who told of his own abuse.

"A man in a white car drove past and asked me if I wanted to get into the car with him. I saw that the car was a UN car because it was white with the black letters on it. The man had a badge on his clothes. When he stopped the car, we got out, he put a blindfold on me and started to abuse me. It was painful and went on for a long time. When it was over we went back to the place we had been, and he pushed me out of the car and left."

Jonas now returns to the same place regularly in the hope of being picked up and paid something for his services. "I know it is a terrible thing to do but I see the UN cars around late at night by the drinking places and I sit there in the hope of being picked up. If I get 1000 SD ($3) a day then that is a good day."[79]

Not much abuse was reported, but the fact that something like this was going on for two years coupled with there being known cases of under-reporting, only shows that abuse was occurring, but not reported on in the media. The very fact that victims would continue their own abuse to have money highlights the desperation and depravity of the situation.

While the UN Sudan mission ended in 2011, when South Sudan became its own nation[80], forces remained in Darfur until 2020.[81] Still, another mission was set up immediately in the new nation of South Sudan. The UN still has ongoing missions and in those can be seen an echo of cold and uncaring environment for victims that has been perpetuated for three decades.

Notes

[1] United Nations Peacekeeping, Ethiopia and Eritrea - UNMEE – Background, https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/past/unmee/background.html

[2] United Nations, UN Mission in Ethiopia, Eritrea to probe misconduct charges against former peacekeeper, https://news.un.org/en/story/2001/08/11652-un-mission-ethiopia-eritrea-probe-misconduct-charges-against-former-peacekeeper (August 27, 2001)

[3] Elise Fredrikke Barth, Karen Hostens, Louise Olsson, Inger Skjelsbæk, Gender Aspects of Conflict Interventions: Intended and Unintended Consequences, Peace Research Institute Oslo Center on Gender, Peace, and Security, https://gps.prio.org/utility/DownloadFile.ashx?id=1133&type=publicationfile, pg 13

[4] The New Humanitarian, Annan asks for 15,000 UN peacekeepers for Liberia, https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/report/46188/liberia-annan-asks-15000-un-peacekeepers-liberia (September 16, 2003)

[5] Relief Web, Sexual exploitation in Liberia: Are the conditions ripe for another scandal? https://reliefweb.int/report/liberia/sexual-exploitation-liberia-are-conditions-ripe-another-scandal (April 20, 2004)

[6] The New Humanitarian, UNMIL investigating alleged sexual misconduct by peacekeepers in four incidents, https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2005/05/03/unmil-investigating-alleged-sexual-misconduct-peacekeepers-four-incidents (May 3, 2005)

[7] Colum Lynch, “U.N. Faces More Accusations of Sexual Misconduct,” Washington Post, March 13, 2005 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30286-2005Mar12.html)

[8] David Fickling, “Aid staff abusing Liberian children, charity says,” The Guardian, May 8, 2006 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/may/08/westafrica.davidfickling)

[9] Ibid

[10] Jenny Kleeman, “Liberia’s childhood horror,” The Guardian, October 16, 2009 (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/oct/16/liberia-rape)

[11] James Butty, “UN Peacekeepers in Liberia Accused of Buying Sex,” Voice of America News, June 12, 2015 (https://www.voanews.com/africa/un-peacekeepers-liberia-accused-buying-sex)

[12] UN News, UN in Liberia report shows decline in sex abuse allegations; envoy says some progress, https://news.un.org/en/story/2007/03/211582-un-liberia-report-shows-decline-sex-abuse-allegations-envoy-says-some-progress (March 9, 2007)

[13] Kathleen M. Jennings, Protecting Whom? Approaches to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in UN Peacekeeping Operations, Fafo Research Foundation, http://lastradainternational.org/lsidocs/fafo_approaches_abuse_0309.pdf (2008), pg 25

[14] Ibid, pg 26

[15] Ibid, pg 28

[16] Thelma Awori, Catherine Lutz, Paban J. Thapa, Final Report: Expert Mission to Evaluate Risks to SEA Prevention Efforts  in MINUSTAH, UNMIL, MONUSCO, and UNMISS, https://web.archive.org/web/20150709034934/http://www.aidsfreeworld.org/Newsroom/Press-Releases/2015/~/media/Files/Peacekeeping/2013%20Expert%20Team%20Report%20FINAL.pdf (November 3, 2013), pg 3

[17] Ibid

[18] Ibid, pg 7

[19] Kate Grady, “Sex, Statistics, Peacekeepers and Power: UN Data on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and the Quest for Legal Reform,” Modern Law Review 79:6 (November 2016), pg 936

[20] Ibid

[21] Ibid, pg 937

[22] Ibid

[23] United Nations, General Assembly, Special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and abuse: a new approach, A/71/818, February 28, 2017 (https://peacekeeping.un.org/sites/default/files/sg_report_a_71_818_special_measures_for_protection_from_sexual_exploitation_and_abuse.pdf), pg 11

[24] UN Peacekeeping, The United Nations in Burundi: Peacekeeping Mission Completes its Mandate, https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/past/onub/photos.pdf (December 31, 2006)

[25] Relief Web, IRIN interview with Carolyn McAskie, head of the UN peacekeeping mission in Burundi, https://reliefweb.int/report/burundi/irin-interview-carolyn-mcaskie-head-un-peacekeeping-mission-burundi (November 5, 2004)

[26] Global Policy Forum, UN Reforms Aim to End Sexual Abuse by Peacekeepers, https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/199/40951.html (May 25, 2005)

[27] BBC, UN sex abuse sackings in Burundi, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4697465.stm (July 19, 2005)

[28] Joe Bavier, "U.N. closes Ivory Coast mission, security remains fragile," Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ivorycoast-un-peacekeepers-idUSKBN19L1VK (June 30, 2017)

[29] Claudia Parson, “Moroccan UN troops accused of abuse in Ivory Coast,” Reuters, July 20, 2007 (https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=https://jp.reuters.com/article/idUSN20327686&prev=search&pto=aue)

[30] Corinna Csáky, Save The Children UK, No One To Turn To: The Under-reporting of Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Aid Workers and Peacekeepers, https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/content/dam/global/reports/education-and-child-protection/no-one-to-turn-to.pdf (March 2008), pg 5

[31] Ibid, pg 6

[32] Ibid, pg 16

[33] Daily Mail, UN peacekeepers 'traded food for sex with underage girls' in west Africa, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2032951/WikiLeaks-releases-U-S-diplomatic-cable-exposing-scandal-U-N-peacekeepers-traded-sex-food-underage-girls.html (September 2, 2011)

[34] Defence Web, United Nations bars 16 peacekeepers from Benin following Ivory Coast sex abuse claims, https://www.defenceweb.co.za/joint/diplomacy-a-peace/united-nations-bars-16-peacekeepers-from-benin-following-ivory-coast-sex-abuse-claims/ (September 6, 2011)

[35] BBC, Peacekeepers 'abusing children,’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7420798.stm (May 27, 2008)

[36] Carla Ferstman, Criminalizing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Peacekeepers, United States Institute of Peace, https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/SR335-Criminalizing%20Sexual%20Exploitation%20and%20Abuse%20by%20Peacekeepers.pdf (2013), pg 4

[37] Scott Cooper, Annals of American Imperialism: The 1991 Coup in Haiti, Left Voice, https://www.leftvoice.org/annals-of-american-imperialism-the-1991-coup-in-haiti (September 29, 2020)

See also: Ansel Herz, Kim Ives, “WikiLeaks Haiti: The Aristide Files,” The Nation, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/wikileaks-haiti-aristide-files/ (August 5, 2011)

[38] UN Peacekeeping, MINUSTAH Fact Sheet, https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/minustah

[39] Relief Web, Haiti: Sexual exploitation by peacekeepers likely to be a problem, https://reliefweb.int/report/haiti/haiti-sexual-exploitation-peacekeepers-likely-be-problem (May 7, 2005)

[40] Haiti Democracy Project, U.N. Soldiers Suspended in Prostitution Incident, https://haitipolicy.org/2005/02/u-n-soldiers-suspended-in-prostitution-incident (February 24, 2005)

[41] Sarah Martin, Must Boys Be Boys? Ending Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in U.N. Peacekeeping, Refugees International, https://web.archive.org/web/20051023224811/http://www.refugeesinternational.org/files/6976_file_FINAL_MustBoys.pdf (October 2005), pg 5

[42] Ibid, pg 6

[43] Ibid, pg 7

[44] Royce A. Hutson, Athena R. Kolbe, “Human rights abuse and other criminal violations in Port-au-Prince, Haiti: a random survey of households,” The Lancet 368:9538 (2006), pg 872

[45] BBC, UN troops face child abuse claims, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6195830.stm (November 30, 2006)

[46] BBC News, Fears Over Haiti Child ‘Abuse,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6159923.stm (November 30, 2006)

[47] Ibid

[48] Reed Lindsay, “U.N. effort dogged by sex claims / Peacekeepers based in Haiti the latest accused of abuse,” SF Gate, https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/U-N-effort-dogged-by-sex-claims-Peacekeepers-2481908.php (December 22, 2006)

[49] Democracy Now, Video of U.N. Peacekeepers’ Sexual Assault of Haitian Prompts Calls to Focus on Post-Quake Rebuilding, https://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/6/video_of_un_peacekeepers_sexual_assault (September 6, 2011)

[50] Trenton Daniel, Raul O. Garces, “Haiti: Boy Who Claims Sexual Assault By Uruguay Peacekeepers Supported By Demonstrators,” Huffington Post, September 6, 2011 (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/haiti-sexual-assault-un-peacekeepers_n_950159)

[51] Ansel Hertz, Matthew Mosk, Rym Momtaz, “U.N. Peacekeepers Accused of Sexually Assaulting Haitian Teen,” ABC News, September 2, 2011 (https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/peacekeepers-accused-sexually-assaulting-haitian-teen/story?id=14437122)

[52] Huffington Post, September 6, 2011

[53] Ansel Herz, Matthew Mosk, Brian Ross, “Haiti Outrage: UN Soldiers from Sex Assault Video Freed,” ABC News, January 6, 2012 (https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/soldiers-held-sex-assault-freed/story?id=15306826)

[54] Maha Hilal, Fawwaz Mustafa, Michelle Seyler, Zoe Walden, Tipping The Scales: Is The United Nations Justice System Promoting Accountability in the Peacekeeping Missions or Undermining It? Government Accountability Project, https://web.archive.org/web/20140418010726/https://whistleblower.org/sites/default/files/FinalTippingTheScales.pdf (September 2012)

[55] Ibid

[56] UN News, Haiti: Three UN peacekeepers repatriated for sexual abuse, https://news.un.org/en/story/2012/03/406312-haiti-three-un-peacekeepers-repatriated-sexual-abuse (March 13, 2012)

[57] Amnesty International, Convictions Against UN Peacekeepers in Haiti Do Not Serve Justice, https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2012/03/convictions-against-un-peacekeepers-haiti-do-not-serve-justice/ (March 15, 2012)

[58] Jake Johnston, UN Points to MINUSTAH as “Model of Accountability” for Sexual Abuse Cases, Center For Economic and Policy Research, https://cepr.net/un-points-to-minustah-as-model-of-accountability-for-sexual-abuse-cases/ (May 27, 2015)

[59] Justin Moyer, “Report: U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti had ‘transactional sex’ with hundreds of poor women,” Washington Post, June 11, 2015 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/11/report-u-n-peacekeepers-in-haiti-had-transactional-sex-with-hundreds-of-poor-women/)

[60] United Nations, General Assembly, Special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, A/70/729, February 26, 2016 (https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/a_70_729.pdf), pg 2

[61] Ibid, pg 7

[62] Ibid, pgs 15-16

[63] Somini Sengupta, “U.N. Plans Reforms to Stamp Out Sexual Abuse by Peacekeepers,” New York Times, March 8, 2017 (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/world/americas/united-nations-antonio-guterres-peackeepers.html)

[64] UN Permanent Missions, SG launches new strategy to fight Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, https://www.un.int/news/sg-launches-new-strategy-fight-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse (March 9, 2017)

[65] UN News, ‘We must not allow protectors to become predators’ – UN field support chief, https://news.un.org/en/story/2016/03/523592-we-must-not-allow-protectors-become-predators-un-field-support-chief (March 4, 2016)

[66] Reuters, Peacekeepers Accused of Abuse in Haiti, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-un-abuse-srilanka/peacekeepers-accused-of-abuse-in-haiti-idUKN0259118620071102 (November 2, 2007)

[67] Paisley Dodds, “UN child sex ring left victims but no arrests,” Associated Press, April 12, 2017 (https://apnews.com/article/e6ebc331460345c5abd4f57d77f535c1)

[68] Ibid

[69] Ibid

[70] Katy Daigle, Paisley Dodds, “UN Peacekeepers: How a Haiti child sex ring was whitewashed,” Associated Press, May 26, 2017 (https://apnews.com/article/96f9ff66b7b34d9f971edf0e92e2082c)

[71] Ibid

[72] Somini Sengupta, “U.N. Votes Unanimously to End Peacekeeping Mission in Haiti,” New York Times, April 13, 2017 (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/world/americas/un-peacekeeping-haiti-cholera.html)

[73] Susan Bartels, Sabine Lee, “They Put a Few Coins in Your Hand to Drop a Baby in You: A Study of Peacekeeper-fathered Children in Haiti,” International Peacekeeping 27:2 (December 2019), pg 182

[74] Ibid, pg 190

[75] Ibid, pg 192

[76] United Nations, Security Council, Security Council Establishes UN Mission in Sudan for Initial Period of Six Months Unanimously Adopting Resolution 1590, SC/8343, March 24, 2005 (https://www.un.org/press/en/2005/sc8343.doc.htm)

[77] ReliefWeb, Sudan: Four peacekeepers accused of sex abuse already repatriated - UN mission in Sudan, https://reliefweb.int/report/sudan/sudan-four-peacekeepers-accused-sex-abuse-already-repatriated-un-mission-sudan (January 4, 2007)

[78] Kate Holt, Sarah Hughes, “UN staff accused of raping children in Sudan,” The Telegraph, January 4, 2007 (https://web.archive.org/web/20080608090750/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1538476/UN-staff-accused-of-raping-children-in-Sudan.html)

[79] Ibid

[80] UN Peacekeeping, UNMIS: United Nations Mission in Sudan, https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/past/unmis/

[81] Michelle Nichols, “U.N., African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan's Darfur to end Dec. 31,” Reuters, December 23, 2020 (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/un-african-union-peacekeeping-mission-in-sudans-darfur-to-end-dec-31/ar-BB1caayO)

On the Ideal Canada and its Consequences

By Miranda Schreiber

So many things have been proposed as constitutive of the Canadian identity, “the north” being one, or public healthcare. What these propositions omit is the role the United States plays in Canada’s self-definition. In part we feel we are in the north because we are north of the United States; our healthcare system seems unique because the U.S. doesn’t have it. Always refracted through the lens of American hegemony, Canada seems to be what America is not. We even voted the “father of socialized healthcare,” Tommy Douglas, the greatest Canadian in 2004. The former premier of Saskatchewan is often described as a Canadian hero.

What accounts of Douglas’ legacy often fail to include is that, for much of his life, Douglas was also a eugenicist. His masters thesis, The Problems of the Subnormal Family, recommended the sterilization of the disabled, sex workers, and “delinquents” with police records. And Douglas, the architect of socialized healthcare, used healthcare to make his point. On page ten of his masters thesis he wrote: “In addition to the cost of keeping these families, is the cost of their medical attention….The cost of bringing most of their children into the world is borne by the city. The cost of dental work, eye correction, and operations is borne by the citizens’ relief organization.” These violent eugenic ideals endorsed by Douglas, and other “Canadian heroes,” are not relegated to history. They continue to have material consequences. The sterilization of Indigenous people in Canada is still occurring.

Americans and Canadians alike refer to an ideal Canada, one which is defined as it diverges from the United States. This idealized country is habitually alluded to on both sides of the border. Senator Ted Kennedy, arguing in favor of single-payer healthcare in 1979, said, “the best evidence is in Canada…the last country that implemented national health insurance and one with which we have shared values and a shared standard of living.” Forty years later in 2019 Bernie Sanders crossed the Canadian border to purchase insulin at one tenth of the cost. During the debates for Democratic leadership in 2019, Sanders said, “…my neighbor fifty miles to the north Canada somehow has figured out how to provide healthcare to every man, woman, and child.” Sanders continued, “in our country, it is a much different story”. On December 4, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted about COVID relief: “Canada did $2000/monthly. The US is the richest nation earth and a 2nd stimulus check is getting blocked.”

Justin Trudeau engages in the same style of comparative rhetoric. On January 27, 2017 Trump instituted the Muslim ban. The next day Trudeau tweeted: “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength.” Trudeau used the hashtag #WelcomeToCanada. But when over 11,000 people crossed into Canada on foot from the United States, Trudeau suddenly retracted his message. “For someone to successfully seek asylum it’s not about economic migration,” he told the press. He said, “You must follow the rules.”

The ideal Canada exists abstracted from everything else; it plays no role in the displacement of people. But in reality transnational Canadian mining companies are currently involved in the extraction of resources from Haiti, the country 85% of the migrants Trudeau criticized were from. In 2019, a report accused six Canadian peacekeepers of sexually assaulting Haitians. Afterwards, nothing happened.

The ideal Canada, which no one has visited, which exists nowhere, seems to serve everyone but the oppressed. For in reality the glare of this Canada obscures a settler-colonial state on stolen land. The $2000/month checks Ocasio-Cortez praised were withheld from disabled Canadians who weren’t working. Medical racism, homophobia, and transphobia flourish in our healthcare system. The mayor of Toronto tweets about Toronto’s diversity while overseeing mass evictions during a pandemic and presiding over an anti-Black police force. Trudeau speaks about reconciliation while appealing court rulings to give Indigenous children compensation. At a point “better than America” begins to mean very little.

And the idealized Canada doesn’t just serve Canadian politicians. American politicians gesture towards “Canada” as a model for healthcare and argue the United States is wealthy enough to have a similar system. This of course is true. But why is the United States so wealthy in the first place? The economic structure which creates American hegemony is never discussed; Americans are just encouraged to integrate public healthcare into an existing capitalist order. In 1979 Ted Kennedy described Canada as a country with shared values and standards of living. Implicitly, places like Cuba, which also had single-payer healthcare, were not aligned with capitalist American values. The ideal Canada is perfect for these sorts of arguments because it in no way contradicts a neocolonial agenda. It presents an aspirational image for leftist American politicians which can be imitated without compromising the United States’ accumulation of capital. Therefore this ideal Canada, which isn’t a country because it doesn’t exist, becomes a perfect national myth. The fantasy serves a mutually beneficial function for politicians occupying Turtle Island, allowing them espouse progressive politics while maintaining white supremacist oppressive structures.

In 2010, Weyburn Saskatchewan unveiled a statue of their former premier, Tommy Douglas, father of Canadian medicare and author of the thesis The Problems of the Subnormal Family. There is an ongoing campaign to put his face on the $5 bill. The statue of Douglas outstretches its hand, gesturing almost towards the sky. The inscription reads simply, the Greatest Canadian.

The Revolutionary Potential of Hope and Utopia

By Yanis Iqbal

We live in disconcerting times. The wealth of USA’s 643 billionaires has soared by 29% since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. On 13 August, 2020, the top twelve US billionaires had surpassed a combined wealth of $1 trillion. This year, the world’s 500 richest people have grown their fortunes by $871 billion, a 15% increase. All this while, the misery of the oppressed people has been increasing.  Due to the Coronavirus-caused intensification of income inequalities, an additional 132 million people will go hungry than previously predicted this year. Moreover, by the end of 2020 12,000 people per day could die from hunger linked to COVID-19, potentially more than will die from the disease itself. Brutally indifferent to the hunger of the oppressed masses, the transnational capitalist class has instead opted to maximize its profit. Between January and July 2020, eight of the biggest food and drink companies paid out $18 billion to shareholders - ten times more than has been requested in the UN COVID-19 appeal to stop people going hungry. While looking at the present-day conjuncture, one can’t help but remember Karl Marx’s incisive description of capitalism: “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.”

The progressive deterioration of socio-economic conditions has created a situation which is objectively revolutionary. By forcing the subalterns into a state of semi-starvation and perpetual precarity, the ruling class is producing a chain of circumstances whose ultimate result will be the aggravation of capitalism’s protracted crisis. In order to understand the objective damage done to capitalism through the hyper-exploitation of the lower classes, the phenomenon of income squeeze can be briefly studied. Reduction of the working class’s income leads to a crisis of over-production since the purchasing power of the workers is not able to keep up with the pace of production. Consequently, the lack of money on the part of the working class results in a decrease in aggregate demand since the ratio of consumption to income is higher for wage earners than for those living off the surplus. Demand-reducing effects arising from the consumption side reduce output, capacity utilization and lower investment over time, further exacerbating the initial crisis of neoliberal capitalism.

Need for a New Narrative

Objective conditions in-themselves, however, don’t possess the capacity to bring about a revolution. To take an example, capitalism has temporarily and unsustainably fixed the crisis of overproduction-under-consumption through credit expansion and debt-financed spending. The fact that capitalism has continued to patch up its contradictions - in however an instable way - proves that objective conditions are inadequate for replacing capitalism. Therefore, objective conditions need the presence of another major element to produce the prerequisites of a revolution.

Proper objective conditions need to cohesively combine with subjective conditions to bring forth a revolution. Subjective conditions refer to the attainment of class consciousness by the proletariat and the consequent construction of hegemony. Class consciousness and the construction of hegemony together constitute the subjective dimension of a revolution through which bourgeoisie ideological apparatuses are subverted. Presently, the Left is primarily waging a battle on the subjective plane in order to build counter-hegemonic bases of resistance and refine the embryonic consciousness of the oppressed masses. While doing this task, it has encountered the hegemonic force of right-wing populism which is culturally re-defining the status of the subalterns and utilizing emotively expressive symbolic methods to over-power the ideological efforts of the Left. In order to institute the hegemony of socialist forces in the civil society, new cultural strategies need to be devised which can combat the influence of the ascendant Right.

Right-wing populism denotes a politico-cultural force capable of emotionally expressing the discontent of the subaltern classes with neoliberal globalization and simultaneously consolidating the power of capitalism. To do this, the Right uses a variety of tactics. It initiates a personalized politics of muscular leaders; divides society into ethnically polarized groups; and uses extra-institutional street violence and mobilizations to infuse politics with raw emotions. All these political methods share a common feature: they aim at aestheticizing politics. In his seminal essay “The Work Of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin, a German Marxist, had lucidly explained the relation between aesthetics and politics while talking about fascism: “Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property.”

Right-wing populism’s emotionally energetic and politically persuasive practices are able to symbolically soothe the psychological wounds of neoliberalism. The Right’s visceral strategies stand in contrast to the emotionally dry politics of the Left. In its singular pursuit of emphasizing the economic defects of capitalism, socialist politics has renounced the effective use of varying emotions. While pointing out the contradictions of capitalism and focusing on economic issues, socialists tend to forget that the human being is incomplete, unfulfilled and laden with unrealized potentials which are the motor of human activity. Since humans are unfinished, they take recourse to repositories of subjective support comprising of emotions and ethics.

Bertolt Brecht, a communist and one of the most influential playwrights of the 20th century, had famously said: “Food comes first and then morality”. Today’s Left has misinterpreted and dogmatically followed this dictum and forgotten the dialectical unity in which food and morality co-exist. A lack of dialectical thinking on this issue has led leftists to believe that a person can exist without the presence of vivid emotions. Refuting this point, Ernst Bloch, a famous Marxist philosopher, had stated: “Human beings do not live by bread alone, particularly when they have none.” By not unifying the scientific critique of capitalism with the power of emotions, the Left has allowed the subalterns to be swindled by the expressive politics of right-wing populism which symbolically re-activates unfulfilled pasts and unrealized futures.

To counter-act the hegemony of right-wing populism, a new narrative of hope needs to be built which can soak the critique of capitalism in emotions, affections and feelings. Bloch had theorized this synthesis of critique and emotions in his magnum opus “Principle of Hope” where he made a distinction between two dominant strains of Marxism: cold stream and warm stream. The cold stream is concerned with the scientific critique of capitalism and the unmasking of mystifying ideologies. The warm-stream is concerned with a utopian revolutionary imagination which utilizes the power of emotions to produce a commitment to emancipation.

Both cold stream and warm stream should operate in a dialectical unity and the ruthless critique of capitalism should always be warmed up in the fire of emotions and affects, a fire that turns “reasons to act into imperatives to act.” As soon as both the streams are unified, a new knowledge structure is produced wherein reason speaks through the heart and guides the latter. The dialectical unification of heart and reason can be completed through the introduction of hope and utopia which produce a captivating vision of a desirable alternative, rooted in anger at the injustices of the world in which we live and infused with confidence about human possibilities.

Hope and Utopia

Utopia is omnipresent in capitalism. It is concentrated in works of mass culture and the bourgeoisie political system which many Marxists tend to flatly dismiss as concerned with “false consciousness” and thus, “manipulative”. Instead of such a uni-dimensional critique, a nuanced analysis of politico-cultural artifacts reveals that they are explicitly utopian. Fairy tales, films, theater and jokes not only mystify the consciousness of an individual but also express in abstract and idealist fashion the potentialities for a better future. On the political level, the bourgeoisie concept of citizenship not only blocks the emergence of class identities but also functions as a vision of a classless society where everyone would be politically and economically equal. A nuanced ideology critique, therefore, “is not merely unmasking…but is also uncovering and discovery: revelations of unrealized dreams, lost possibilities, abortive hopes - that can be resurrected and enlivened and realized in our current situation.”

The omnipresence of utopias in capitalism means that the oppressed classes have been silently struggling for a better world. Socio-cultural and political utopias are imperfect yearnings for what is more fully developed in Marxism and socialism. Leftists have to work with this contradictory subaltern consciousness which contains within itself the seeds of communism. By refining the nascent consciousness of the subalterns, leftist activists can form the utopia of communism. This form of constructing hegemony works with the pre-existing thought-systems to sharpen its edges and subvert it from within.  A letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge dated 1843 explicitly supports this method of constructing hegemony: “Our motto must therefore be: reform of consciousness not through dogmas, but through the analysis of mystical consciousness which is still unclear to itself. It will then become apparent that the world has long possessed the dream of a matter, of which it must only possess the consciousness in order to possess it in reality. It will become apparent that it is not a question of a great thought dash between past and future, but of the carrying-through of the thoughts of the past.”

The formation of a communist utopia is inevitably accompanied by the institution of hope as an important axis of struggle. A communist utopia anticipates a new future and rejects the existing state of affairs. Correspondingly, to maintain a conviction in the new future and keep on struggling against the status quo, hope needs to be firmly established as the fluid which constantly flows throughout the matrix of the communist utopia. Hope in a communist utopia is not synonymous with naïve optimism. If that was case, hope would merely become another form of voluntarism. In contrast to voluntarism, hope in a communist utopia is intertwined with the knowledge of material conditions and reaches out for a new global future while taking full account of all the pressures towards a civilizational collapse. Consequently, hope denotes a terrain of constant striving where the communist activists are familiar with the indeterminacy of their class struggle which has not yet been defeated but likewise has not yet won. In spite of this indeterminacy, communist militants continue to maintain a commitment to emancipation and derive hope from the immense power they posses. Their power emanates from a fundamental flaw at the heart of any system of domination: the dependence of the dominator on the dominated. Recognizing this fact, subaltern classes believe that they have the capability to challenge capitalism and steer historical processes in the direction of communism.

When communist utopia and hope are used as the cultural tools of a revolution, a resilient environment of social sensitivity and emotional energy is produced. In this environment, the rhythms of revolution are composed of a critique of capitalism and a forward-looking, hope-infused conceptualization of a communist society. By highlighting the obscenity of capital accumulation through a scientific critique of the existing system, rage, fury and indignation are generated among the masses. John Holloway, a Marxist sociologist, powerfully expresses the sentiment of “refusal” which is created as a result of fury and indignation: “We are the fury of a new world pushing through the foul obscenity of the old. Our fury is the fury of refusal, of stifled creation, of indignation. Who are these people, the politicians and bankers who think they can treat us like objects, who think they can destroy the world and smile as they do it? They are no more than the servants of money, the vile and vicious defenders of a dying system. How dare they try to take our lives away from us, how dare they treat us like that? We refuse.”

The loud refusal of capitalism is accompanied by the soft glow of revolutionary hope which moulds the anger of the masses into a communist utopia. With the help of this communist utopia, subaltern classes are suffused with the echoes of emancipation and act on the basis of what Marx had designated as “the categorical imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man is a debased, enslaved, neglected and contemptible being.” The act of overthrowing capitalism, therefore, becomes ethically grounded and rooted in the everyday emotions of subaltern people.

In the contemporary period, a re-invigorated leftist strategy – combining emotions and scientific critique – is indispensably needed as the Right intensifies its cultural techniques and effectively aestheticizes politics to satisfy the demands of the oppressed classes.  Today, more than ever, we need the presence of revolutionary hope and a well-built communist utopia capable of emotionally articulating the repressed desires and existential needs of the masses. A poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky, the poet of the Russian Revolution, beautifully expresses the revolutionary imagination which is needed to revitalize the global Left:

“We will smash the old world
wildly
we will thunder
a new myth over the world.
We will trample the fence
of time beneath our feet.
We will make a musical scale
of the rainbow.

Roses and dreams
Debased by poets
will unfold
in a new light
for the delight of our eyes
the eyes of big children.
We will invent new roses
roses of capitals with petals of squares”

Capitalist Immiseration, the Trump/Biden Effect, and the Fascist Tide

By Colin Jenkins

Things under Trump were not good for most of us. Same can be said for Obama and the Bushs, Clinton and Reagan, and so on. Things under Biden will not be good for most of us. Why? Because capitalism is not designed to be good for most of us. We are its commodities. Our lives are bought, sold, used, abused, disregarded, and discarded when no longer needed. We are not only alienated “appendages” of productive machinery, as Marx once brilliantly noted, but we are all-encompassing conduits for the upward flow of profit. Our labor, our existence, our lives, our actions, every move we make are all geared in a way to direct money to a minority class that sits at the top – the capitalists. This has never been more evident than with the advent of social media, where even our basic social interactions with one another are now monetized for the benefit of tech industry executives and their shareholders.

In the current era of neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our lives have only become more expendable. Our labor is not needed as much anymore. Machines are filling that void. A fully globalized labor pool has, once and for all, put the international proletariat on the same track. We are now all in a race to the bottom. This isn’t to say the global South no longer falls victim to colonialism and imperialism (because it still does), but rather that a fully globalized economy has now set the former industrialized working classes in the imperial core on the same path as the super-exploited working classes of the global South. It is only a matter of time before this total immersion is realized. The combination of a broadening labor pool and rapid increase in technology has made machines (Marx’s “constant capital”) more prevalent and, in turn, human labor (Marx’s “variable capital”) obsolete in many industries. In a humane system, this would be something to celebrate, as people would be increasingly liberated from tasks that can be done by machines, thus freeing us up to spend more time with our families, communities, and to explore our creative and productive capacities away from capitalist coercion. Unfortunately, in an inhumane system like capitalism, which recognizes us as nothing more than commodities, it leaves us in a state of desperation – as “appendages” desperately seeking productive machinery to attach ourselves to so that we can properly serve our capitalist overlords.

Many of us are aware of the Oxfam reports that have come out over the past decade, especially those which highlight global inequality. A glance at their yearly analyses shows us the disastrous effects of a global capitalist system that has run its course, and in doing so has gone from the “predatory phase of human development,” as Thorstein Veblen once referred to it, to a seemingly full-blown cannibalistic stage of human regression:

• In 2010, the 388 richest individuals in the world owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth.

• By 2015, this number was reduced to only 62 individuals.[1]

• In 2018, it was the 42 richest individuals.

• In 2019, it was down to only 26 individuals who own more wealth than 3.8 billion people.[2]

These numbers paint a damning picture, but do not necessarily illustrate the most important point: that Marx’s theory of immiseration is being realized. In other words, at a closer look, we can see the claim that “capitalism has lifted people out of poverty” is simply not true. Rather, as inequality has risen due to unfathomable amounts of wealth being funneled to the top, the lives of billions of people worldwide have worsened. Proponents of capitalism would like us to believe this is not a zero-sum game, or even worse that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” but in an era dominated by fiat currency, where wealth is represented by mere numbers in a computer program, created arbitrarily by capitalist governments, it is the wealthiest individuals who determine the value of that currency. And when a handful of individual capitalists command wealth in the hundreds of billions, it is clear that the 4.2 billion members of the global proletariat who must survive on less than $7.40 a day exist in a state of extreme poverty. In true zero-sum fashion, as more wealth has concentrated at the top, more poverty has developed among the bottom. In fact, between 1980 and 2015, the number of people living in this state of poverty increased by one billion.[3] And this does not begin to assess the new realities of the working classes within the imperial core, such as the United States, which have been artificially buoyed by unsustainable credit and debt schemes for the past three decades, all while real wages have stagnated, living-wage jobs have plummeted, and costs of living have skyrocketed. It is only a matter of time before this entire house of cards, which has been constructed and maintained to keep capitalism and extreme wealth inequality in place, comes crumbling down. This fragile arrangement is being tested like never before, as 40 million Americans are facing eviction, food pantries are being strained, and anywhere from a third to a half of working people in the US cannot pay their bills. The capitalist class knows their system is on the brink — not because of the pandemic but more precisely due to its historical trajectory and limitations — and are now tasked with maintaining their cushy positions at the top in the aftermath. In other words, as capitalism comes to its inevitable conclusion, they prefer a controlled demolition.

Governments, politicians, and international agencies have been put in place during the post-WW II era to maintain the global capitalist system and force it on peoples everywhere, whether through resource extraction or by opening new markets. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, capital has run roughshod over the world. Now, as we move toward the middle of the 21st century, it has run its course.  In the US, Presidents, Senators, Congresspeople, Supreme Court justices, politicians, and technocrats have one primary purpose in the system: to maintain the status quo by serving capital. Or, as James Madison once said, “to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority.” In these times, this means stomping anticipated unrest. It means overseeing this process of immiseration and degradation, and ensuring it takes place in an orderly way. Tangible examples of this are the US government (via the Federal Reserve) giving capitalist institutions upwards of twenty trillion dollars under the guise of “quantitative easing” and “stimuli” over the past decade, while at the same time pushing austerity measures, militarizing domestic police forces, and brutalizing working-class folks in the streets. Joe Biden has spent his life serving capital with this blueprint. He is a known commodity to capitalists and has served them well. And, as expected, he has already begun stacking his administration with corporate lackeys who have dedicated their lives to serving power by making the rich richer and the poor poorer (because the latter is required for the former). 

As bad as Trump was, especially regarding his rhetoric that emboldened millions of white supremacists nationwide, he was a bit of a wildcard to the capitalist ruling class (despite being a member of it). He was driven primarily by ego and has spent his entire life on the other end of this relationship between capital and the state, feeding politicians from both parties to serve his interests. He was unpredictable. He got into pissing matches with anyone and everyone, bucked military advisers, challenged media, and kept people guessing. He has no ideology, no belief system, no substantial opinions on anything. He loves himself, his money, his power, and anyone who loves him back; and he has learned over the course of his uber-privileged life (which was literally handed to him on a silver platter) that manipulation is the key to all of this. If there's one skill that he has, it's the ability to persuade others without really saying much. So, he built up a loyal following, especially among the petty bourgeoisie, a sector of society that has historically served as the embryo for fascism. In the US, this demographic is dominated by middle-aged white men who similarly had privileged lives handed to them upon birth. Granted, many have used this privilege to actually work their ways to increased financial success (unlike Trump, who has never had to work), but also many who are feeling the increased pressures being brought down on them from the same era that has catalyzed Trump’s rise – the neoliberal, globalized, late stage of capitalism, which has created unprecedented instabilities throughout the socioeconomic spectrum, especially in regards to race and class inequities. Trump spoke to these people as a last line of defense for that “great white America” in their heads. However, he did not instill the same amount of trust in the bourgeoisie. So, while the transition from capitalism to fascism is already here in many respects, the capitalist class is still not fully prepared to cement the move. To them, Trump was both ahead of the game and too loose to oversee the final transition. That — with the help of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Democrats — will come in the relatively near future, as a more polished version of Trump waits in the wings to accept the torch in this perpetual, right-wing slide of lesser-evilism that has dominated bourgeois politics for the past four decades.

Thus, the focus on Trump as some sort of aberration has always been dangerous. Because he was not created in a vacuum. He was created through four decades of neoliberalism – which has been characterized most importantly by a fusion of corporate governance, the very ingredient that Mussolini once referred to as a prerequisite to fascism – corporatism. This is the final stage of capitalism, and it is upon us. Both political parties are facilitators of this transition, with Democrats serving as a center-right buffer to obstruct any significant formations of socialism from the left, and Republicans as the forerunners of this fascist realization. Like any process, it is happening gradually, with mistakes, mishaps, regenerations, improvements, and steadying mechanisms. Both parties interplay in this process, learning from one another (often unknowingly), giving and taking in a reciprocal unity that represents capital and their class interests, which must be guaranteed a place at the table when the transition is fully realized. This takes time. And unseating Trump, with all of his liabilities, was part of this process. A Biden-Harris administration will bring more stability to the transition, allowing the capitalist class time to regroup and steady the ship, and allowing the army of petty-bourgeois white supremacists time to foment in the shadows, patiently awaiting the new and improved Trump to follow. The next Trump will be more grounded in ideology, more strategic, more under the control of the capitalist class as it continues to perfect corporate governance. And with Biden and the Democrats running interference for their far-right counterparts, by obstructing and repressing socialist movements from below, the transition will continue. Because the only two possible outcomes from capitalism are socialism or fascism, and the capitalist class will do everything in its power to avoid the former, thus embracing the latter.

The fact that a record number of Americans turned out for this latest presidential election is concerning because it suggests that not enough people understand the path we are currently set upon is a one-way street. We can not and will not be steered in a safe direction, no matter which politicians or presidents we choose. And while a few credible arguments can still be made for participating in bourgeois elections, especially within certain localities, this collective delusion that places a premium on voting remains a formidable obstruction to systemic change. Quite simply, the change we need will not come from voting. If anything, our continued faith in a system that was designed to fail us only delays our collective liberation. The fact that wealthy people, billion-dollar corporations, entertainers, athletes, mass media, and politicians themselves go out of their way to push massive “get-out-and-vote” marketing campaigns on us should give pause to anyone. This delusion benefits them. And it harms us. It will take a critical mass of proletarians to take a stand and push for systemic change. This means confronting the capitalist power structure, its immense wealth, and formidable death squads head on. This will require a significant increase in class consciousness, which in turn will lead to wholesale divestment from bourgeois politics, elections, and all politicians from the two capitalist parties, even those described as “progressive.” Shedding this delusion is crucial. And we are running out of time.

Notes

[1] January 18th, 2016. An Economy for the 1%. Oxfam. Boston, Massachusetts: Oxfam America. (https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/fileattachments/bp210-economy-one-percent-tax-havens-180116-summ-en_0.pdf).

[2] Elliot, Larry. January 20th, 2019. “World’s 26 richest people own as much as poorest 50%, says Oxfam.” The Guardian, March 5th.

[3] Hickel, Jason. 2015. “Could you live on $1.90 a day? That’s the international poverty line.” The Guardian, March 5th

Why a Biden Presidency Will Not Solve the Global Crisis of Democracy and Capitalism

By Joshua Lew McDermott

70 million Americans voted for the re-election of Donald Trump. Racist and misogynistic sentiment, both implicit and overt, undoubtedly explain part of why so many Americans are willing to embrace Trumpism. Yet, liberal analysts parroting the claim that Trump voters, including a shockingly large number of minority voters, are solely or primarily motivated by racism are blinded by their own refusal to acknowledge the failure of the neoliberal politics of the past three decades that have paved the way for Trumpism, and other authoritarian far-right leaders, taking power around the world over the past decade.

Far-right strong men such as Trump, Erdogan, and Bolsonaro are inherently at odds with the working class. They promote the further enrichment of the historically mega-wealthy with regressive tax policies and enable corruption among the elite by gutting regulation. They slash social spending and dampen consumer, worker, and environmental protections.

Like the fascist movements of the 1920s and 1930s, the middle and upper classes remain the classes most supportive of, and critical to manufacturing, reactionary politics. And the reasons for middle class support of Trumpism is perhaps unsurprising: material benefits in the form of tax breaks are one obvious example. 

But it is ignorant to assume that the new wave of far-right leaders lack mass support among the working class. Take Trump’s success, relative to other Republican candidates, in drawing the Latino vote this year. The major question we must ask is: despite anti-poor and working-class policies, why do Trumpist figures retain so much support among working people?

First, the failure of mainstream neoliberalism has led to a mass rejection of the establishment policies and institutions which have dominated the world since the shift away from Keynesianism and social democracy starting in the 1970s, institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations itself. The 2008 crash represented a major crisis of legitimacy for the neoliberal world order. The breakdown of traditional cultural and social bonds and identities, and the continued rise in inequality has ignited a backlash against the system and the values it is assumed to embody.  

As has always been the case when the capitalist system faces crisis, illiberal politics and nefarious nationalism offer an alternative for alienated and disenfranchised workers. The re-birth of the far-right is the outcome of the failure of the neoliberalism of the late 20th century.

Second, the liberal left, unlike the authoritarian right, has failed to offer a real and viable alternative to the neoliberal crisis that got us to this point. There is a reason both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden underperformed at the ballot box. Both candidates promised, essentially, a continuation (or, in Biden’s case, a return) of the status quo. Indeed, Trump’s most successful populist appeals, despite being largely symbolic in nature (he still largely embraced neoliberal economic policies) have been the ones attacking the hallmarks of neoliberalism, such as the repeal of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (only to essentially replace it with an identical agreement). 

Liberals’ failure to engage with class politics will continue to undermine their ability to win elections, successfully govern, or, most crucially, combat the systemic crises facing the capitalist system. Writing off Trump voters as merely ignorant or racist is not only self-defeating, but also disconnected from the reality.

Lastly, the right, leveraged by hugely successful propaganda efforts and buoyed by the wallets of billionaires such as the Koch Brothers, has succeeded to an unbelievable extent in convincing workers that Trump and conservative capitalists, despite all indications to the contrary, care about and empower workers. So long as American workers continue to believe the lie, originated by neoliberal ideological warriors from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush, and emboldened by major propaganda outlets such as libertarian think tanks or Prager U, that tax cuts for the rich will ultimately benefit the working class, the left has lost the messaging war. No amount of appeals to decency and liberal values can combat what workers view as their concrete material interests.

Indeed, the appeal of racism, patriarchy, and nationalism has always been material prosperity and dignity (at the expense of the mistreatment of vulnerable populations). Trump and the far-right have succeeded in convincing many workers that the problem is not capitalism nor the economic policies of neoliberalism, but the liberal pillars of equality, cosmopolitanism, and secularism. As has always been the case in history, appeals to religious fundamentalism, racism, and nationalism have been forwarded as the solution to what are, in reality, the failures of capitalist globalization. This was the primary appeal of fascism in the 1920s. It remains the primary appeal of the right-wing authoritarian neoliberalism pedaled by Trump today. Just as Hitler provided the illusion of economic sustainability and empowerment to German workers via imperialist expansion and war, Trump and the far-right provide the illusion of providing for workers via imperialist plunder and unsustainable economic growth driven by tax breaks and a booming rogue financial sector which has little connection to the actual economy.

This is why, unless Biden is able to structurally alter not only the American political and economic landscape, but also the dynamics of underdevelopment and crises – of inequality, of ecology, of democracy – around the world, the conditions which have driven so many workers into the arms of the far right will persist and likely worsen. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely a Biden administration will have the necessary will nor power to right the sinking ship. So long as liberals continue to hail the capitalist market as the paramount foundation for global society, people will continue to search for alternatives and worldviews that can explain why they lack healthcare, why their forests are on fire, why their jobs don’t pay enough for them to survive with dignity. So far, the right has done better than the left at offering that alternative vision.

A Brutal History: Slave Patrols and Building a Racist System with Political Power

By Kaity Baril

In the US, the modern context of ruthless policing or oppressive social control originated as far back as the 1790s. The Charleston City Watch and Guard controlled the movement of the slave population at the time. The Guard was armed with swords and pistols, and it imposed a nine o’clock curfew for Black residents of the city. White slave owners wanted to prevent uprisings and revolts. Patrols closely monitored those in captivity, especially when they were working outside of the sight or the control of the enslaver. 

The creation of the first publicly funded police force, in Boston, was in the 1830s. By the 1890s, every major city in the United States had a police presence, born from racist, slave patrols in the era of slavery and relied on through  Black Reconstruction, and the Jim Crow era. 

Now, rather than upholding slavery, cops enforce laws and policies similarly meant to control the lives and movement of Black people. The late 1960s and early 1970s was a period of enormous social turmoil that raised the possibility of revolution. All fundamental institutions of society—the government, the “free” market, the military and war, the police, the nuclear family, white supremacy and others—were challenged. The elite, white, ruling class responded to these direct challenges to their power with Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Crime,” followed by Nixon’s “War on Drugs,” which were jumping off points for subsequent administrations to maintain their preferred social order. The “War on Drugs,” renewed with vigor by Ronald Reagan, still rages, and the U.S. has had the highest incarceration rate in the world since at least 2010. The increase of law enforcement in schools creates a “school to prison pipeline,” in which out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, and school-based arrests are increasingly used to deal with student misbehavior, especially for minor incidents, and huge numbers of children and youth are pushed out of school and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Not surprisingly, children of color (as well as children with disabilities and children from other vulnerable populations) are disproportionately targeted with these punitive measures.

During the 1980s, the ideology of “zero tolerance” school discipline originates from the “get tough on drugs and crime” policies of that era. This was also the dawn of mandatory minimum sentencing laws — fixed sentences for individuals convicted of a drug crime, with no judicial leniency allowed.  More than 1.6 million people are arrested, prosecuted, incarcerated, placed under criminal justice supervision, and/or deported each year on a drug law violation. “Three-strikes” laws, now in place in 28 states after first appearing in 1994, require anyone previously convicted of two or more violent crimes or serious felonies to receive a life sentence upon a third felony conviction,, regardless of the circumstances or, as in California, sometimes even the severity of the offense (e.g. felony petty theft).  

The Clinton Administration’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 was the largest crime bill in the history of the country. It provided 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons, and $6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs.

The “War on Terror,” following the September 11, 2001 attacks, was a catalyst for the use of military grade weapons on protestors, most conspicuously in Ferguson in 2014, following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown. So began the Black Lives Matter movement. 

Cops are Tools of Class Oppression and Mass Incarceration

For decades, starting in 1966, school districts across the country employed the “Officer Friendly” program that brought cops into local Elementary classrooms. Their goal was to indoctrinate children with the belief that the police are an indispensable part of society, who not only uphold the law but protect them. Perhaps this is because the police were established to protect the interests of the wealthy. Racial violence has always been a part of the mission to protect private, crooked institutions.

The institutions that the State has endowed with the most direct power over people’s lives, and a disproportionate share of tax dollars, are the police, prisons, courts, and the military. These enact forms of legalized punishment and repression under the guise of neutrality by being “bound to laws.” In reality, the laws primarily serve one class: the wealthy. Cops are the primary line of defense for a small fraction of the U.S. population – a handful of private corporate owners. A clear example of this is the role police played in the housing crisis. 

The number of empty, unsellable homes far exceeds the number of homeless. Based on currently available numbers, there are about 31 vacant housing units for every homeless person in the U.S. If policing served the people, cops would have arrested the bankers and the white collar criminals who made enormous profits by manipulating the housing market, even after their schemes created a massive global recession in 2008, and a spike in homelessness. Cops would be helping to seize homes to end, not create, homelessness. Yet evictions continue on a daily basis.

Who does policing target? Police are typically deployed to criminalize poverty, concentrating their efforts on criminalizing those with dark skin, forcing millions of people – primarily people of color, people with mental illness, and those in poverty – into the prison system, depriving them of voting and employment rights, and thereby preserving privileged access to housing, jobs, land, credit, and education for whites. Police are used to break strikes and assault picket lines, where workers are struggling for basic human rights and better conditions. Protests and uprisings during the Black Lives Matter movement have resulted in the use of military crowd control techniques. The political aim of the police is seemingly to silence the demonstrators and curtail their constitutional right to free speech and freedom of assembly, especially Black, Brown, Indigenous folks, and communities of color.

The Violent Military Industrial Complex Leaks into the U.S. Police State

The Military Industrial Complex is directly connected to policing and the Prison Industrial Complex in this country. American policing has become unnecessarily and dangerously militarized, in large part through federal programs that have armed state and local law enforcement agencies with the weapons and tactics of war, with almost no public discussion or oversight. The U.S. already acts as the police force of the world, enforcing authority through drone wars, proxy battles, and meddling. Black liberation is a global struggle, and there is a link between racial oppression internationally and domestically. A militarized police is only equipped to escalate situations.

Throughout US history, the police (including federal policing agencies like the FBI) have attacked and undermined social justice organizations and efforts, at home and abroad, through various forms of surveillance, infiltration, sabotage, and assassination. The political function of the police destroys any form of revolution, so it’s no surprise that in the 10 years of anti-establishment social unrest between 1965 and 1975, the number of police officers grew by roughly 40 percent nationally. In 1974, $15 billion was spent on criminal justice, 57 percent going directly to police expenditures4. With this increase of spending, the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO “neutralized” political dissidents and threats, like the Black Panther Party, through subterfuge and extreme violence. In league with local police units, the FBI declared war on radicals and groups from nationally oppressed communities. Then, the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams were first formed in Los Angeles in 1968. Fifty years later, the US still holds these political prisoners captive, like Mumia Abu-Jamal. The Free Them All Campaign continues to advocate for their release, even as the police continue to use these tactics against protestors today

Using federal funds, state and local law enforcement agencies have amassed military arsenals to wage the failed “War on Drugs,” disproportionately in communities of color. Aggressive enforcement of this mandate from decades ago has lost its public mandate, as 67 percent of Americans think the government should focus more on treatment than on policing and prosecuting drug users. Aggressive drug arrests and prosecution has impacted millions of lives , disproportionately in communities of color, though drug use rates are quite similar across race and class. Law enforcement agencies’ routine use of heavily armed SWAT teams to search people’s homes for drugs is the same hyper-aggressive form of domestic policing that killed Breonna Taylor.  

The militarization of American policing is evident in police officer training, which encourages them to adopt a “warrior” mentality and view the people they are supposed to serve as enemies. It’s also evident in the equipment they use, such as battering rams, flashbang grenades, and APCs. The 1033 Program transferred surplus military equipment to civilian police departments. Only 45 days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Congress effortlessly passed the Patriot Act , which George W. Bush signed less than a month after the United States invaded Afghanistan, as part of the “War on Terror”. It broadly expanded law enforcement powers to search, surveil, investigate and indefinitely detain people. Among its effects, the Patriot Act has been used to expand the racist war on drugs. 

Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security, created in 2002 to coordinate government intelligence gathering in order to improve counterterrorism efforts,  has set up centers with the FBI and local police that have been used to spy on protest movements, from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter. More than 7,000 people were arrested during the Occupy movement over the course of just a few months. These arrests, alongside incidents of police brutality, were intended to stamp out a movement that took aim at the face of class oppression from the rich, elite of Wall Street.

Since May 2020, the uprising spurred by the police lynching of George Floyd, has intensified the militarized mobilization of law enforcement. The police forces are equipped in full riot gear and use weapons designed for war. Black and Brown activists in the United States, especially during the Ferguson protests, have described domestic police departments as “occupying forces,” much like those in Afghanistan or Yemen or Palestine. In fact, allowing Israeli forces and U.S. participants to learn from each others’ violent practices and tactics results in the violation of the human rights of Black and Palestinian people, but there are efforts to end this through a campaign called, “End the Deadly Exchange.” Our police, at the behest of local government, wield not only military arms, but what they’ve learned from the military’s formal joint training, tactics (both street combat and psychological operations), and other means of  suppression. At least 200 cities in the U.S. had imposed curfews by early June, while more than 31 states and Washington, D.C. activated over 75,000 National Guard personnel, arresting over 10,000 people. Yet widespread police brutality and the mobilization of military law enforcement tactics, like kidnapping protestors, have only furthered massive civil unrest. 

The Case for Revolutionary Optimism: A Path towards Abolition

So, how do we fight an institution doing what it has been designed to do, one that’s protected by government leaders and employment contracts, and is therefore incapable of reform?  The problems of punitive, racist policing are cultural — ingrained in our society — and cannot be solved by merely identifying a couple murderers or “bad apples,” if you will. 

Given how corrosive policing has historically been and continues to be, it shouldn’t be surprising that with alternatives, our society could flourish without cops. Policing could, and should, be defunded and abolished.

A society that prioritizes human needs ahead of profit means communities that have sufficient housing, food, health care workers, prisoner re-entry services, and community practices that hold all of its members accountable for any harm and enact restorative justice. Mutual aid, rather than one-time giving events, would allow us to share our skills collectively and all contribute. 

It may seem implausible or unreachable. It requires divesting from police, prisons, and the military, and instead, investing in communities of color and supporting the public policies that encourage, not inhibit, family-sustaining wages, job development, education, and the equitable distribution of resources. We cannot accept corporate, private interests to define our way of living. The ruling, capitalist class is in power, controls our government policies, and we must not capitulate to the world they want us to live in. It is one with an illegal slave system that is the Prison Industrial Complex. A society with an abolitionist as a focus will not be built on the violence of a capitalist state designed to defend property and capital, but one in which the people are empowered to provide for each other. 

We must build class unity and solidarity through organizing within our communities to protect one another. There are few tools within the system to fight the State’s abuse politically and legally, but we can ask for the immediate release of inmates in this country’s tortuous prison system; the end of three strikes and overly harsh sentencing guidelines; changing the 13th Amendment to eliminate the clauses that allow for slavery and “involuntary servitude” for people who are convicted; the end of qualified immunity for officers; the repeal of federal programs that send military equipment to local police; the end of “Broken Windows” policing tactics, including stop-and-frisk and other police harassment tactics; the prohibition of no-knock entry; and laws that make it harder for the police to obstruct free speech activity. 

While these are only reforms, we can also strengthen community accountability models that critique punitive systems that maintain repressive, colonial ideology.  Together, we can connect movements, groups, and individuals to transgress the boundaries of institutions. These alternatives must include continuing critiques to improve social conditions, as well as provide accessible, sustainable levels of resources that are consistent with anti-capitalism, anti-racism, and anti-colonialism principles. This is how we can transform and empower communities towards justice and abolition.

Challenging Neoliberal Complacency: The Future of Leftist Organizing

By Mahnoor Imran

Republished from Michigan Specter.

The lesser evil has prevailed. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have defeated the demagogic megalomaniac in the White House otherwise known as Donald Trump. However, in the middle of a mismanaged pandemic that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, nationwide protests against the epidemic of police brutality, and the looming threat of climate change, Biden’s insipid promise of returning to some semblance of normalcy feels uninspiring. A return to the pre-Trump status quo will not actively transform the material conditions of the working class, and a massive shift in the political paradigm is desperately needed.

Although their win has prompted celebration, there is something to be said about the failure of establishment Democrats to provide compelling narratives that take on Wall Street, insurance companies, and the fossil fuel industry. Though progressives and leftists are frequently vilified for expressing concerns about the incoming Biden-Harris administration, both Biden and Harris have problematic records that warrant criticism about their vision for the future.

Last year, Biden assured his wealthy donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he were elected, once more reminding us that elite centrists will always prioritize the interests of the ruling class. Despite having an atrocious record of racist tough-on-crime policies, Biden operated his campaign under the assumption that people of color were obligated to vote for him simply because he was not Trump. In addition to these things, many resistance liberals have conveniently forgotten about him leading support for the Iraq War, the Obama-Biden administration carrying out mass deportations that ripped families apart, his inappropriate displays of unwanted affection toward women, and credible sexual assault allegations against him. As Attorney General of California, Harris fought hard to keep the wrongfully convicted in prison, withheld evidence that would have freed incarcerated people, criminalized and imprisoned parents because their children were truant, and received criticism from the transgender community for denying gender-affirming healthcare and banning forums that sex workers use to protect themselves.

In the next four years, the Biden-Harris administration will continue to champion neoliberal governance and imperialist interests. Their transition team is filled with wealthy corporate executives and lobbyists from companies like Uber and Amazon who are entirely disconnected from the struggles of the working class. The team also comprises Obama administration alumni like Cecilia Muñoz, President Obama’s top immigration advisor who continually justified harsh immigration enforcement policies and rationalized the separation of parents from their children.

Though centrism may have won at the top of the ticket, it proved to be electorally shaky. In fact, many moderates lost their seats or came dangerously close to losing their seats. Although Democrats tried to blame the Left for their own shortcomings, progressive organizers, many of whom were people of color, were the ones who helped secure Biden’s win in swing states. Black communities, indigenous communities, and Hispanic communities did the heavy lifting for a democracy that never worked in their favor. Representative Rashida Tlaib, who represents one of the most impoverished districts in the country, recently told Politico that “If [voters] can walk past blighted homes and school closures and pollution to vote for Biden-Harris, when they feel like they don’t have anything else, they deserve to be heard.” Instead of paying lip service to social issues and defaulting to vague bromides about unity, the incoming Biden administration owes these communities more than just a nod of thanks. They deserve a bold vision for the future of America.

The reality is that our nation’s current modality of political and economic operation is committed to half-hearted incrementalism and assumes that anything other than that is impossible. This concession to pragmatism inhibits real progress. The pursuance of middle-ground politics paves the way for excessive globalization at the expense of developing countries, corporate tax breaks paid for through austerity, and rhetoric about civility at the expense of communities of color.

Neoliberalism is degenerative. It allows for oligarchs to dictate our political agenda and influence our political process. It launches wars based on lies and makes billions in profits by selling arms to repressive regimes. It tries to convince us that the levers of the capitalist market are capable of producing equity and sustainability. It fuels a for-profit healthcare system that burdens people with thousands of dollars in medical debt. It maintains an egregious carceral system that disproportionately harms and kills black, indigenous, Hispanic, immigrant, mentally ill, and disabled communities. It deceives us into believing that individual hard work is the key to amassing wealth and achieving the American Dream. It generates cult-like infatuations with billionaires who would be nothing without government subsidies and the workers whom they underpay and exploit.

When governments abandon their obligation to transform socioeconomic outcomes for the better, political efficacy diminishes. This points to the inextricable link between neoliberalism and the triumph of Trumpism. In four years, we may have hard-right candidates try to take the presidency again. In that terrifying prospect, the pullback might be stronger than the push forward. The only way to prevent this is for the Democratic Party to muster the moral and political courage to get behind popular movements and policies like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and defunding the police.

Unfortunately, both Biden and Harris have spent a considerable amount of energy contemptuously distancing themselves from progressivism and denouncing socialism. Although the word “socialist” is used pejoratively by Republicans to lambaste any Democrat with a pulse, the more that Democrats try to distance themselves from progressivism and socialism as if they were inherently bad, the more it legitimizes GOP framing.

Instead of waiting out an interregnum in our political history, we must continue to fight for progressive policies that are actually popular among rural, urban, and suburban voters. The future for leftist organizing and movement building is far from bleak. In fact, 67% of Americans support increasing the minimum wage to $15, 69% support Medicare for All, and 63% support free public college.

Furthermore, 26 out of 30 of the Democratic Socialists of America’s nationally endorsed candidates won their races. All four members of “The Squad” — Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Presley, and Ilhan Omar — have won their reelections and will be joined by progressive insurgents Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush. Every single swing-seat House Democrat who endorsed Medicare for All won their race and 99% of Green New Deal co-sponsors won their races in this cycle.

Although Biden’s win has undoubtedly exacerbated neoliberal complacency, this is a critical moment to push for an unapologetic agenda that promotes justice, challenges structural racism, combats climate change, increases political accountability, dismantles institutions of oppression, and radically redistributes wealth. We can continue to organize by supporting indigenous sovereignty, fighting for police and prison abolition, developing ecosocialist frameworks for promoting environmental justice, and creating mutual aid networks. When we build community power and cultivate solidarity, we can rise above the forces of oppression, marginalization, and vituperation that threaten to destroy us. The horizon of a liberated future is within our line of sight. We just have to keep moving forward and pushing left.

Black American Apathy and Internationalism

By Erica Caines

Republished from Hood Communist.

“…There is no “American dilemma” because Black people in this country form a colony, and it is not in the interest of the colonial power to liberate them. Black people are legal citizens of the United States with, for the most part, the same legal rights as other citizens. Yet they stand as colonial subjects concerning the white society. Thus institutional racism has another name: colonialism.”

-Black Power: Politics of Liberation.

For those organizing African people towards Revolutionary Pan-African Socialism, a Joe Biden presidency is not a win. It’s a detriment. Understanding neoliberalism breeds fascism would mean that it is a mistake for anyone alleged to be of a “radical politic” to celebrate Biden becoming the president-elect and, by extension, celebrating his running mate, Kamala Harris. Unfortunately, many Africans in the US have strapped themselves in willingly for a presidency that will attempt to be even more hawkish than the Barack Obama administration in every warmongering, drone-dropping, coup-backing, militarized-policing way.

Much of the issues around internationalism stems from a communal lack of political maturity, which helps one analyze their material conditions as they are. Furthermore, a lack of political education obstructs international solidarity with Africans and oppressed people globally. African people in the US make up a colonized nation not dissimilar to colonized nations always under attack by the strongarm of US imperialism and their western allies.

The US military and its 400 bases worldwide serve as occupiers in the same way the (overt) police state does in our neighborhoods. What is the difference between the US African Command (AFRICOM), which is said to “combat the War on Terror,” and militarized policing units like Operation Relentless Pursuit and Operation LeGend, both used in multiple cities across the country to “combat crime and domestic terrorism”? What is the difference between the murderous Israeli occupation of Palestine and the occupation of a colonized neighborhood in the US using IDF trained police units?

There is no difference.

The primary contradictions of imperialism have been distorted by dishonest conversations around “anti- Blackness,” as well as a new sense of American ‘pride’ found in Black Americans that assists in framing all geopolitical issues from an ‘us vs. them’ lens. Global and domestic imperialism are counterparts. African people’s allegiance to the US, and military enlistment, has always existed as a contradiction within the community. While it may be true historically African people were the least favorable to war, Obama’s presidency set the stage for a bold backing of US imperialism by way of patriotism from ‘Black America.’

Although most unite under hating Trump, many earnestly believe the US is worth saving. Mass “get out the vote” mobilizations across the country ensued to “stop full-blown fascism” by asserting a false sense of power in electing a majority unfavorable democratic candidate. The mainstream media announcement of Biden as the 46th president has caused a mass reactionary hysteria and sighs “of relief” that things may return to normal.

As the celebrations have been going on, despite Donald Trump not formally conceding, Biden’s team has been busy, too. Names for potential cabinet members who range from the center to the right have been circling the internet. Jim Clyburn and other democratic centrist moderates are currently vowing to protect the country from going “socialist” by pushing back against the messaging of “defund the police.” 

Benjamin Netanyahu and Narendra Modi have congratulated the presumed  president-elect and madame vice president-elect, promising even closer ties and relations. Both Netanyahu and Modi are fascists, in their own right, and part of a more extensive global expansion of fascist leadership, yet neither Biden nor Harris find an issue in continuing the existing relationships despite the very real murderous actions of both men in their prospective countries against Muslims. Coincidentally, alleged crimes against Muslims is the same propaganda use to be actively aggressive towards China and President Xi Jinping that Biden intends to continue with through the Indo-Pacific Command. 

Reactionary Internationalism: Fascists Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu congratulate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on their presumed electoral victory.

With rumors of Dick Cheney potentially being an advisor to Biden on foreign policy, a majority conservative Supreme Court and a majority GOP senate would be a convenient cover for Biden’s actual geopolitics and non-plan for the poor working-class. Biden has built a career in the US government on criminalizing Africans and other colonized people in the US with the racialized “War on Drugs” through policy measures like the crime bill (domestically) and Plan Colombia (globally).

The “open-letter left,” which includes characters like Noam Chomsky and Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK, has decided, as a predominately white and economically stable coalition of signatures, to ignore historical materialism for the sake of ousting Trump. They have agreed that any policies that will place colonized people the most at risk, here and abroad, would be worth it so long as it’s not policies signed off on by Trump. Just like during the Obama era, the US left is proving itself useless in not only helping the masses comprehend imperialism but fighting against it by not voting for the man who has never seen a war he disapproved.

“Imperialism, which is the highest stage of capitalism, will continue to flourish in different forms as long as conditions permit it.  Though its end is certain, it can only come about under pressure of nationalist awakening and an alliance of progressive forces which hasten its end and destroy its conditions of existence.”  

- Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism

‘Black American’ apathy through American exceptionalism creates that “sigh of relief” people express now. The indifference to wars and occupation is the result of a rupture in the ability for African people to make the connections between a man promising more policing as a campaign strategy during the height of mass uprisings against the police to his aggressive rhetoric towards nations like Venezuela, China, Iran, etc. Nor the US’ role in establishing brutal neocolonial leadership in the Global South and on the Continent.

It is becoming more and more evident that despite the strengthening calls to ‘Free Palestine’ and more recent actions to ‘End Sars,’ internationalism will again become a backburner issue. How will Africans in the US combat this and re-establish the anti-war internationalism politics that cemented the Black Radical Tradition and politics of the past?

First, we must ruthlessly attack the aversion to political education. The lack of understanding of the Third World struggles adjacent to the struggles of Africans in the US has resulted in liberal reactionary responses to anti-imperialism. Imperialism can not continue to be a vacuum issue by Africans living within the empire of the US. This isolated framing of the world prevents the practice of revolutionary internationalism – international solidarity against the same white supremacist forces that oppress Africans domestically. We are witnessing the frantic reactionary calls to “let people enjoy things” for the sake of identity reductionism.

A #BlackLivesMatter solidarity action in occupied Palestine drawing connections between the murders of George Floyd and autistic Palestinian youth, Eyad Al-Hallaq

Online discourse centered around anti-imperialism is met with push back primarily because people do not possess the political maturity to comprehend the ways imperialism materially affects their everyday lives and the importance of internationalism. Once Africans in the US understand themselves as colonized people on stolen land, there will be a more precise analysis of how liberation is sought and gained through tactics not tied to revolutionary internationalism – not to continuously voting for one’s demise.

For colonized people within the imperial core, there should be no allegiance to America.

A Modest Proposal for Global Egalitarianism

By Hank Pellissier

Editor’s Note: The ideas and proposals expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of the Hampton Institute.

Walking under the freeway past the homeless encampment, you hear a voice, “I need 50 cents.” Ignoring the beseecher, you scan the news on your smartphone: Jeff Bezos now has $300 billion. Ahead, you see a struggling woman forced into an ICE van, next to signs promoting two candidates you despise but realize will control your future.

Does society have to be like this?

No. This essay will present an option, grounded in justice and liberty.

Global Egalitarianism is a political philosophy structured on the moral ideal of truly establishing all human beings as equals. 

We believe that concept, don’t we? All humans are equal in importance. This maxim inspired American and French revolutions, abolition of slavery, the women’s suffragette movement, gay rights, and every effort to overthrow a tyranny. 

All People Are Equal is the compassionate principle of modern, democratic civilization - we embrace this belief and expect others to react with anger if this ethos is violated. 

Earth should be an Egalitarian Planet. But it isn’t. 

Equality is distant dream today due to economic, social, and political institutions that divide rich and poor, powerful and powerless, bordered nations from bordered nations. 

In our 2020 world, people aren’t equal. The power of a rural, single mother in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is insignificant compared to a man addressing his cabinet at 1900 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC. 

• The richest 1% earn 26.3 times more than the bottom 99%.

• There are 2,095 billionaires, but 71% of people live on less than $10 a day.

• There are more slaves on Earth than ever before.

• One person has visited every nation on Earth but millions have never been out of their village.

• 750 million people would emigrate, if they could.

• 52% of people are dissatisfied with their democracy, and 71 nations aren’t democratic.

• 4.5 million Americans have PhDs, but 775 million people in the world are illiterate.

Let us obsolete these depressing statistics and establish global egalitarianism instead, using the tools of Wealth Redistribution, Open Borders, and Pure Democracy. 

WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION

Robin Hood is an egalitarian champion because he ‘robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.’ Many others - like Juraj Janosik (Slovak folk hero), Phoolan Devi (‘Bandit Queen’ of India), and Jose Mujica (President of Uruguay) conducted illegal philanthropy similar to the fictitious yeoman of Sherwood Forest. Today the most laudable proponent of wealth redistribution might be Kshama Sawant of Seattle; she spearheaded the movement for $15/hour minimum wage and she’s presently seeking to nationalize Amazon.

“Redistribution” evokes fear and rage in the upper class; clutching their pearls they hiss, “I worked hard for my money” despite 60% of US wealth being inherited. Most middle income people also bristle when ‘leveling’ is considered - it’s derided as communist thievery to support ‘lazy people.’

Truth is, economic history is a long tragedy of powerful entities enriching themselves by stealing from the poor and middle class. Ethical people are appalled that peasants worked 4 unpaid days a week for their landlord, but today’s situation, where Warren Buffett ($82.47 billion) pays less taxes than his secretary is identically unjust.

The rich don’t need all their money; they just buy unnecessary toys with it, like 169 cars, or giraffes ($40,000 - $80,000) and platinum Arowana fish ($300,000), or a kitchen remodel every three years. I know a man living alone in a $40 million house; his beach town has 147 homeless people. Money doesn’t even ‘buy happiness’ - researchers discovered that more wealth simply creates more want. 

The “Happy Nations” list exhibits the smallest divide between rich and poor. Happy Nations have a smaller ratio between CEO & worker salaries - in #1 Finland the average CEO salary is $99,515 - in #18 USA it is $820,616.

How rich or poor would everyone be if wealth was divided equally, amongst the world’s inhabitants? What’s the PPP per capita? The answer is $17,110 - similar to China and Costa Rica. Plus - if the world had ‘open borders’ - economists estimate global wealth would elevate 50%—150%. For simplicity’s sake, let’s just double the first figure, for $34,220 - a digit between the economy of delightful Slovenia and popular Portugal. 

This figure would lift 2.7 billion people out of their present-day poverty, and of course, lower spoiled others to a more modest standard of living. Solid gold toilets would lose their customers - egads!

How can money be redistributed? Multiple methods exist; let’s quickly discuss a few:

Reparations - Fairness requires that assets stolen from a region are returned, in full, even if the assets were stolen many years ago. Unpaid labor should also be recompensed. It’s evident that Africans and Diasporans of African descent deserve retribution for the enslavement, exploitation, and colonization of their continent. India also deserves to be paid back ($45 trillion?) for the precious treasures the British overlords robbed during colonization, plus the 15-29 million Bengalis who starved to death in the World War II era famine, due to food diverted by Winston Churchill. Similarly, the Dalits (untouchables) deserve compensation from their oppressors for the subjugation they’ve endured. 

Armenians and Greeks deserve reparations from Turks; Congolese deserve reparations from Belgium (King Leopold enslaved the populace on rubber plantations and killed 10 million); South Africans deserve reparations for apartheid; Native Americans deserve reparations from European invaders; Jamaica deserves reparations from Britain; South Korea deserves reparations from Japan; Vietnam deserves reparations from the USA; Serbia deserves reparations from NATO, and Haiti deserves reparations from France. 

Land Reform - Property is overly-owned by the already-prosperous, who enrich themselves further via rentals and extracting resources. Revolts are launched to distribute land fairly, but not often enough and they aren’t always successful. (Model land reforms occurred in Cuba and South Korea.) Oftentimes, land reform is stymied by foreign powers who want to continue gorging themselves with the status quo. Guatemalan and Chilean leaders, for example, wanted land reform but were overthrown by USA-instigated coups. 

Land could be distributed equally, globally. The figures on this are fantastic. If 7.8 billion people divided all the habitable land on Earth, there’d be 2.3 acres per person, claims a University of Texas study.

The Federal Land Dividend strategy of Zoltan Istvan is also worth considering. His idea is to lease USA public land (the government owns 40% of USA acreage, worth $150+ trillion) to provide $1,000 month dividends to citizens. This proposal is a fusion of UBI, Nationalization, and Land Reform tactics. 

Nationalization - Public ownership of a region’s resources and industries is a sure-fire way to equitably distribute profit. Norway’s nationalization of its North Sea oil serves as an exemplary example; the profits guarantee the citizenry with free health care, free education, and pensions. Similar situations are evidenced elsewhere: Bolivia nationalized gas, petroleum, hydroelectricity, and lithium - the latter move led to Evo Morales’s ousting in a coup engineered by US shenanigans. Cuba nationalized all private businesses and factories, including 36 US-owned sugar mills; this led to its decades-long pariah status. Chile nationalized copper; Mexico and Venezuela nationalized oil; Pakistan nationalized steel mills; Quebec province in Canada nationalized hydroelectric; Sri Lanka nationalized tea, rubber, and cocoa; Italy nationalized Italia airlines; India nationalized banks, etc. 

Nationalization exists worldwide, but still, only a small fraction of resources are publicly owned. Far more could be done. The Socialist Alternative party has an egalitarian agenda: they want the 500 biggest corporations in the USA to be publicly owned. Nationalization is fairer than today’s system where products are created by billionaires who pay workers demoralizing salaries. (Apple workers in China work 60 hour weeks for low pay in unsafe conditions). 

Taxation - Progressive income tax, wealth tax, property tax, inheritance tax, sales tax, value-added tax (VAT), and other levies can be used to encourage wealth redistribution. The USA rich were taxed up to 91% in the 1950’s, an era with far better economic equity than today. French economist Thomas Piketty believes “billionaires should be taxed out of existence”; his viewpoint is supported by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “No billionaires”, in my opinion, is a very permissive limitation. I personally think no one needs more than $10 million - this easily guarantees you ‘never have to worry about money again.’

Wages - Minimum wage and maximum wages policies can be used to level the financial field. Luxembourg has the highest minimum wage in the world per nation - $14.12 an hour - but in the USA, that’s topped in at least 17 cities that offer $15/hour or more. If personal wealth, globally, was capped at $34,220 annually, as I previously suggested, $20/hour in a 36-hour work week would be sufficient. Maximum wages only exist in Cuba - this strategy was voted on in Switzerland in 2013 but it failed to pass, receiving just 34.7% of the vote. An obviously target for maximum wage limits is the USA, where corporate CEOs are paid 361 times more than workers.

Universal Basic Income - UBI has accelerated quickly from ‘crazy idea’ to ‘practical solution.’ Early implementations in Canada, Namibia, Finland, Alaska and Stockton, California, suggested its potential. Andrew Yang campaigned for President with UBI as his signature goal. 20th century proponents like Martin Luther King Jr. and Richard Nixon suggest UBI’s major party appeal; Libertarians also appreciate its ability to reduce welfare bureaucracy. UBI guarantees citizenry - either all or selected segments - a monthly check to spend as they please. The Covid-19 pandemic sharply increased interest in UBI; by September 2020 policies were planned for Spain and 20-30 USA cities. 

Corporate Sharing & Worker Power - Germany gives workers significant representation in management, with 50% of the supervisory board of directors elected by labor. Their seat at the table guarantees they won’t be mistreated, like warehouse workers at Amazon, who are automatized and “treated like robots” - or at Tesla, oft-accused of racial hostility and discrimination. Strong unions also provide “higher wages, better benefits, increased economic mobility, and reduced poverty.”

Communes & Cooperatives - Numerous egalitarian communities exist, where members live and work together, sharing labor and profit from their enterprises. Examples include Twin Oaks Intentional Community in Virginia, Hutterite colonies in Canadian and US prairie states, and kibbutzim in Israel. Cooperatives and collectives also thrive worldwide, with research indicating they are more productive than hierarchal companies. Spain has more than 18,000 co-operatives, a legacy from the anarcho-syndicalist movement that preceded the Spanish Civil War. 

OPEN BORDERS

Open Borders are essential in creating Global Egalitarianism. Allowing free and easy immigration to every corner of the planet will deliver these benefits:

• People with specific job skills can relocate to an area where their potential can be maximized.

• People seeking education in their field of interest can move to receive the training they want.

• Commercial items can be transported easily without punitive tariffs and inspections.

• Economists claim Open Borders would elevate global wealth by 50% - 150%. This seems obvious: today millions are unable to produce their potential because they live in environments unsuitable to their skills.

• People with an aversion or disinterest in the culture of their homeland can relocate easily to other cultures where they can intellectually and emotionally thrive.

• People trapped in an overpopulated region or an area ‘going underwater’ due to climate change, can settle smoothly into a safer or less-crowded geography.

• Dangerous mindsets like patriotism, nationalism, and xenophobia will be avoided if everyone can relocate internationally, establishing cordial relationships across the globe.

• War between hostile nations will become increasingly rare if individuals see themselves as global citizens, instead of warriors for a single state.

• Understanding and empathy for all humanity will be elevated if borders are eliminated. Today’s demarcation of WE vs. THEM promotes dehumanization and suspicion of the ‘other.’

• 10. Cultural forms and intellectual ideas will flourish if access is enhanced.

Arguments against Open Borders are listed below, with rebuttals. 

Criminals will escape their homelands and invade unsuspecting neighboring nations!

   — Easily preventable. Access to international travel can be denied to those with a criminal record.

Immigrants from impoverished lands will migrate and seize all the best jobs in foreign lands.

   — Studies indicate most people choose not to move. Example: residents from the impoverished state of West Virginia ($24,774 per capita) seldom relocate 500 miles to the wealthy state of Connecticut ($76,456 per capita). This objection also lacks the morality that global egalitarianism requires. Is it ethical to deprive someone of livelihood because they didn’t grow up as your neighbor? Should their value be lessened because they’re categorized with the subhuman label of ‘alien’? Thirdly, immigrants are generally hired in employment niches the natives lack sufficient numbers to fill. Example: USA needs computer engineers, who are subsequently hired from China, India, Russia, etc. 

Local Culture will be destroyed. 

   — This is the weakest argument of all, as anyone who has eaten a juicy fish taco in Minnesota can testify. Culture survives because it provides joy and speaks to the human condition. Ghanaians celebrate both Christian and Muslim holidays, because they’re all fun. Music, art, cinema, literature and cuisine always borrow across borders: Cubism was inspired by West African masks; the violin (invented in Italy) is instrumental in Chinese concerts; spicy peppers, originating in Peru, are essential in Korean cooking; Nobel Prize novels and Oscar-winning films are applauded everywhere. 

PURE DEMOCRACY

Global Egalitarianism requires huge improvement in politics so all people are truly equal. Most democracies in the world are terrifically flawed; many have been re-classified as ‘oligarchies’ - rule by the rich. Pure Democracy is a goal no nation has yet attained, or is even close to. Achieving this has to be done incrementally. Below are suggestions in approximate order:

• Abolish Anti-Democratic Institutions. Many systems today subvert the will of the majority. These institutions need to be eliminated, or drastically reformed. In the USA this initial step requires abolishing the Senate and the Electoral College, electing Supreme Court justices, and transferring commander-in-chief powers from the President to the House of Representatives.

• Campaign Finance Reform. Political contests need to be publicly-financed - no outside money at all. Candidates abusing this must be disqualified.

• Abolish Lobbyists. Politicians cannot accept funding or favors from corporations and special interest groups; this obviously influences their votes. Washington DC needs to cleanse itself from all potential bribery.

• Ranked Choice Voting. This helps select politicians the majority can at least tolerate, and it eliminates the need to vote for ‘the lesser of two evils.’

• Adopt the Parliamentary System. Presidential government (adopted by 52 nations) is far less democratic than the Parliamentary system, enjoyed in 102 nations. The Parliamentary system enables smaller party representation, it reduces the power of the Executive branch, and it encourages multi-party collaboration.

• Encourage Secessions. Individual political power is elevated if the citizen belongs to a smaller group. A voice is more likely to be heard if it is one voice out of 100,000 - 10,000,000 instead of one voice out of 300,000,000 - 1,300,000,000. Eight of the Top Ten “Most Democratic Nations” have 10 million people or less, and none has more than 35 million people. To guide the world towards this, support separatist groups in Catalonia, Galicia, Flanders, Scotland, Chiapas, California, Texas, and Darfur - and support the desire of Berbers, Kurds, Yakuts, Batwa, Canarians, Balinese, Karenni, Assamese, Uygurs, Punjabi, Rwenzururu, and dozens of other ethnicities to govern themself.

• Demand Initiatives and Referendums (also known as Proposition or Plebiscites). “R & I’s’ provide ballot measures to the citizenry, so they can directly vote on reforms advanced by other citizens. (Surprisingly, 24 states do not even offer this option) Switzerland and Ireland offer the most referendums in Europe. In Asia, The Philippines is prolific with plebiscites.

• Poli Sci Education Required? Fear of ‘mob rule by idiots’ is often just elitism, but it would be alleviated if citizens has to pass information and logic tests for the right to vote.

• Abolish Politicians. Representative democracy is flawed because politicians are often narcissistic, authoritarian, and corrupt. If direct democracy referendums are in place, there’s no need for conniving intermediaries.

• Emulate Rojava Communalism - Rojava - the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Syria - governs itself with a ‘communalist’ structure, designed by American political philosopher Murray Bookchin. Rojavans enjoy enormous power at the community level; its ‘bottom-up system’ provides a voice to everyone. The long-term goal of communalists is to organize Earth’s inhabitants into thousands of self-governing communities that are intrinsically linked into non-competitive, ever-large confederacies.

CONCLUSION

Do you find these utopian ideas preposterous? Science fictional? A wonky, cringe-inducing re-write of John Lennon’s “Imagine’?

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Disillusionment with the status quo, twinned with social media, can create rapid change.

Global Egalitarianism is the future we need.

References

Introduction

Jeff Bezos - $300 billion https://www.ccn.com/jeff-bezos-300-billion-amazon-becomes-worlds-8th-largest-economy

Global Egalitarianism https://globalegalitarianism.wordpress.com/about/ https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_96 https://simoncaney.weebly.com/global-egalitarianism.html

equality inspires revolutions, etc. https://www.nps.gov/revwar/unfinished_revolution/01_all_men_are_created_equal.html

richest 1% earn 26.3 times more than bottom 99% https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/07/29/5-mind-blowing-statistics-about-the-richest-1.aspx

2,095 billionaires https://indianewengland.com/2020/04/forbes-releases-34th-annual-list-of-global-billionaires-includes-several-indians-and-indian-americans/

71% of people live on less than $10 a day https://money.cnn.com/2015/07/08/news/economy/global-low-income/index.html

more slaves on Earth than ever before https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/slaves-time-human-history-article-1.3506975

One person has visited every nation on Earth https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/man-has-visited-every-country-in-the-world/

750 million people would emigrate, if they could https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-worldwide-migrate.aspx

52% of people are dissatisfied with their democracy https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/02/27/satisfaction-with-democracy/

71 nations aren’t democratic https://www.reference.com/world-view/countries-democracy-8f9e05f7d96a76e7

775 million adults are illiterate https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/global-rate-of-adult-literacy-84-per-cent-but-775-million-people-still-cant-read/article4528932/#:~:text=There%20are%20775%20million%20people%20in%20the%20world,in%20their%20footsteps%20because%20they%20aren%27t%20attending%20school

Wealth Distribution

Juraj Janosik (Slovak folk hero) https://www.slavorum.org/juraj-janosik-legendary-slovak-thief-turned-hero/

Phoolan Devi (‘Bandit Queen’ of India) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Phoolan-Devi https://medium.com/@mishra18tanvi/phoolan-devi-the-real-bandit-queen-of-india-2fb09b35d17f

Jose Mujica (eventual President of Uruguay) https://nationalinterest.org/commentary/jos%C3%A9-mujica-uruguays-robin-hood-guerrillas-9066

Kshama Sawant of Seattle - $15/hour minimum wage https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/05/kshama-sawant-seattle-socialist.html

nationalize Amazon https://theoutline.com/post/6587/nationalize-amazon-make-bezos-our-bitch?zd=1&zi=ys72jrku

60% of US wealth inherited https://evonomics.com/americans-get-rich-stay-rich/

peasants had to work 4 days a week unpaid for their landlord http://www.lordsandladies.org/serfs.htm#:~:text=The%20daily%20life%20of%20a%20serf%20was%20dictated,the%20lord%27s%20mill%2C%20and%20pay%20the%20customary%20charge.

Warren Buffett pays less in taxes than his secretary is identically unjust https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/338189

unnecessary toys… like 169 cars https://www.thethings.com/priciest-cars-jay-leno-owns-and-cheapest/

giraffes ($40,000 - $80,000) https://www.exoticanimalsforsale.net/giraffe-for-sale.asp

Asian Arowana fish ($300,000) https://nypost.com/2016/06/05/this-fish-is-worth-300000/

beach town has 147 homeless people https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/news/story/2019-10-01/aliso-viejo-denounces-federal-judges-statement-alleging-it-dumped-homeless-in-laguna-beach-shelter

more wealth simply creates more want https://www.livescience.com/10881-global-study-money-buy-happiness.html

“Happiest Nations” https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2020/03/20/ranked-20-happiest-countries-2020/#29f843517850

#1 Finland the average CEO salary is $99,515 https://www.payscale.com/research/FI/Job=Chief_Executive_Officer_(CEO)/Salary

#18 USA it is $820,616 https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/chief-executive-officer-salary

per capita income - $17,110 - similar to China and Costa Rica https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/

Open Borders - global wealth would elevate 50% - 150% https://openborders.info/utilitarian/#:~:text=Utilitarian%20justifications%20for%20open%20borders%20hinge%20on%20the,economic%20production%20%28see%20our%20double%20world%20GDP%20page%29

Reparations

Africans deserve reparations https://nehandaradio.com/2020/05/25/tafi-mhaka-europe-should-pay-reparations-for-colonising-africa/

India deserves reparations https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-33618621

Dalits (untouchables) deserve compensation https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/india-dalits-reservation-representation-suraj-yengde-6523483/

Armenians deserve reparations from Turks https://ahvalnews.com/armenians-turkey/turkey-may-face-reparation-demands-after-us-recognises-armenian-genocide-turkish

Greeks reparation from Germany https://breakingnewsturkey.com/world/greece-demands-germany-pays-war-reparations

Congolese reparations from Belgium https://www.africanexponent.com/post/9792-will-belgium-ever-apologize-to-drc-and-pay-reparations

South Africans reparations for apartheid https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/south-africa-reparations-for-aparthied

Native Americans reparations from European imperialists https://study.com/academy/lesson/native-american-reparations.html

Jamaica reparations from Britain https://moguldom.com/189262/jamaica-wants-britain-to-pay-billions-in-reparations-for-slavery/

South Korea reparations from Japan https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-08-17/japan-korea-and-the-tquestion-of-how-to-pay-for-historic-wrongs

Vietnam reparations from the USA https://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/18/opinion/the-forgotten-debt-to-vietnam.html

Serbia reparations from NATO https://europediplomatic.com/2019/09/15/moscow-suggests-us-reparations-for-yugoslavia-bombings/

Haiti reparations from France https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/haiti-reparations-france-slavery-colonialism-debt/

Land Reform

Cuba land reform https://cubaplatform.org/land-reform

South Korea land reform https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/10/12/for-asia-the-path-to-prosperity-starts-with-land-reform https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/opinion/sa-could-model-its-land-reform-on-the-success-achieved-in-south-korea-10450729#:~:text=South%20Korea%E2%80%99s%20land%20reform%20is%20regarded%20as%20one,impact%20on%20agricultural%20productivity%2C%20which%20later%20sustained%20poverty-reduction

Guatemalan coup https://www.umbc.edu/che/tahlessons/pdf/historylabs/Guatemalan_Coup_student:RS01.pdf

Chilean coup https://foodfirst.org/publication/agrarian-reform-and-counter-reform-in-chile/

7.0 billion people divide Earth - 2.3 acres each https://foodfirst.org/publication/agrarian-reform-and-counter-reform-in-chile/

The Federal Land Dividend - Zoltan Istvan https://www.businessinsider.com/basic-income-with-federal-land-dividend-2017-7

Nationalization

Norway nationalization https://mg.co.za/article/2011-09-08-oil-together-now-nationalisation-lessons-from-norway/

Bolivia nationalization https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/bolivias-nationalization-oil-and-gas https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bolivia-power-nationalization-idUSTRE64013020100501

Bolivia coup engineered by US for lithium https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/morales-claims-orchestrated-coup-tap-bolivia-lithium-191225053622809.html

Cuba nationalizes 36 US-owned sugar mills http://en.cubadebate.cu/news/2015/08/10/cuba-nationalizes-us-companies/

Chile nationalized copper https://www.chemeurope.com/en/encyclopedia/Chilean_nationalization_of_copper.html

Mexico and Venezuela nationalized oil https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazil-venezuela-mexico-three-ways-nationalize-oil-150004780.html

Pakistan nationalized steel mills https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/pakistans-nationalized-steel-mills

Quebec nationalized hydroelectric https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/hydro-qubec-why-nationalize-the-electricity-sector

Sri Lanka nationalized tea, rubber, and cocoa http://teasrilanka.org/history

Italy nationalized Italia airlines https://www.businessinsider.com/alitalia-nationalized-by-italy-history-2020-3

India nationalized banks https://www.oneindia.com/feature/full-list-of-nationalised-banks-in-india-2718000.html

Socialist Alternative wants the 500 biggest corporations in the USA to be publicly owned https://www.socialistalternative.org/about/

Apple workers in China work 60 hour weeks for low pay in unsafe conditions https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/electronics/9174900/Apples-Chinese-staff-work-60-hours-a-week-independent-audit-finds.html

Taxation

US rich were taxed up to 91% in the 1950’s https://americansfortaxfairness.org/tax-fairness-briefing-booklet/fact-sheet-taxing-wealthy-americans/

Thomas Piketty “billionaires should be taxed out of existence” https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/12/billionaires-should-be-taxed-out-of-existence-says-thomas-piketty.html

‘no billionaires’ - Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/24/politics/bernie-sanders-ultra-wealth-tax-billionaires/index.html https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/02/aoc-billionaires-should-not-exist/

$10 million - ‘never have to worry about money again.’ https://www.getrichslowly.org/is-10-million-enough/ 

Wages

Luxembourg minimum wage - $14.12 an hour https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-countries-with-the-highest-minimum-wages.html

USA 17 cities with at least $15/hour minimum wage https://time.com/3969977/minimum-wage/

vote in Switzerland 2013 failed, receiving 34.7% of the vote https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/24/switzerland-votes-against-cap-executive-pay

USA CEOs are paid 361 times more than workers https://popularresistance.org/why-are-ceos-paid-361-times-more-than-their-average-employees/

Universal Basic Income

UBI in Canada https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/mincone-experiment-in-dauphine-manitoba

UBI Namibia https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/ubi-in-nambia

UBI Finland https://basicincome.org/news/2019/04/finland-further-results-from-the-famous-finnish-ubi-experiment-published/

UBI Alaska https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/alaskaubi

UBI Stockton, California https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-02/stockton-extends-its-universal-basic-income-pilot

UBI Martin Luther King Jr. https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/martin-luther-king-jr

UBI Richard Nixon https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/richard-nixon-ubi-basic-income-welfare/

Libertarians UBI https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-case-basic-income

UBI Spain https://www.businessinsider.com/spain-universal-basic-income-coronavirus-yang-ubi-permanent-first-europe-2020-4

UBI 20-30 USA cities https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/08/08/universal-basic-income-gains-momentum-in-america

Corporate Sharing and Worker Power

Germany worker representation - 50% of the supervisory board of directors https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-08-24/why-german-corporate-boards-include-workers-for-co-determination#:~:text=Wherever%20on%20that%20spectrum%20your%20views%20lie%2C%20it,or%20require%20some%20such%20form%20of%20employee%20%E2%80%9Cco-determination.%E2%80%9D

Amazon workers “treated like robots” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-workers-protest-unsafe-grueling-conditions-warehouse

Tesla accused of racial hostility and discrimination https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-12/tesla-workers-claim-racial-bias-and-abuse-at-electric-car-factory

Union benefits https://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/economy/reports/2016/06/09/139074/unions-help-the-middle-class-no-matter-the-measure/

Communes and Cooperatives

Twin Oaks Intentional Community in Virginia https://www.twinoaks.org/

Hutterite colonies http://www.hutterites.org/

Kibbutzim https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-the-kibbutz-movement

collectives more productive than hierarchal companies https://cccd.coop/news/%EF%BB%BF-worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-normal-companies

Spain 18,000 co-operatives https://www.theguardian.com/social-enterprise-network/2012/mar/12/cooperatives-spain-mondragon

Open Borders

Open Borders General Info https://openborders.info

Open Borders elevate global wealth 50% 150% https://openborders.info/double-world-gdp/

USA imports computer scientists   https://www.prb.org/usforeignbornstem/

Cubism inspired by West African masks https://www.pablopicasso.org/africanperiod.jsp

Pure Democracy

Abolish Anti-Democratic Institutions https://hankpellissier.com/sixteen-reforms-to-improve-usa-democracy

Ranked Choice Voting https://www.fairvote.org/rcvbenefits#:~:text=%20Benefits%20of%20Ranked%20Choice%20Voting%20%201,more%20voices%20are%20heard.%20Often%2C%20to...%20More%20

Superiority of the Parliamentary System https://lebassy.blogspot.com/2006/07/superiority-of-parliamentary-system.html

“Most Democratic Nations” https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/democracy-countries

Separatist and Secessionist groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession

24 states do not have Referendums and Initiatives https://ballotpedia.org/States_without_initiative_or_referendum

Switzerland and Ireland offer the most referendums in Europe https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/switzerland-held-9-referendums-already-2016-11727#:~:text=Switzerland%20has%20been%20holding%20referendums%20since%20the%2018th,to%20the%20polls%20more%20often%20than%20the%20UK.

Rojava Communalism https://itsgoingdown.org/the-communes-of-rojava-a-model-in-societal-self-direction/ https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2020/08/20/the-two-faces-of-kurdistan/ https://roarmag.org/essays/communalism-bookchin-direct-democracy/

Murray Bookchin https://www.britannica.com/biography/Murray-Bookchin